What is 4th Gen DLP/ DLEP? | GhangorCloud | Top DLP Solutions Gartner | DLP vendors

By Team Synax

What is 4th Gen DLP/ DLEP? | GhangorCloud | Top DLP Solutions Gartner | DLP vendors

Overview

What is 4th Gen DLP/ DLEP? Data Loss Prevention or Data Leak Prevention, is an application/software that leverages policies, procedures and technologies to monitor the use of sensitive data inside the organization and prevent leakage or misuse by unauthorized, internal or external parties.

Synax offers 4th Generation DLP solution which not only prevents accidental leakage, but also detects and prevents data exfiltration performed by malicious actors (insiders, hackers).

Fig-1: Evolution of Data Leak Prevention Solutions

1st Gen DLP:

First Generation DLP solutions were primarily focused on Digital Rights Management (DRM) functionalities. These solutions were tightly coupled with document creation and authoring tools. The main objective was to create controls for each piece of content in a document so that only authorized individuals could perform read/write/copy/delete and other operations on the constituent elements of the document. Credentials based controls (e.g. “Password Protection”) were the main form of access control so that only authorized individuals with the knowledge of the assigned password could open the document and gain access to the content.

2nd Gen DLP:

Second Generation DLP solutions focused on identifying and protecting “Structured Data” such as Credit Card Information or Social Security Number. These solutions were built using basic “Signature Matching” technology such as Regular Expressions and Pattern Matching Algorithms for standard data items (such as PCI, PII, ePHI, etc.). These solutions were constrained to limited applicability, as they were only capable of identifying (and hence protecting) the Structured Data that can be mapped using the Signature Matching technology. Policies could then be defined to enforce appropriate security measures against theft and/or unauthorized disclosure of confidential data/information.

3rd Gen DLP:

Third Generation DLP solutions were primarily focused on identifying and protecting sensitive data in “Unstructured” form. This can be any confidential information found in loosely formatted documents (such as text files, word files, pdf, spreadsheets, emails, power point presentations, memos, etc.). Unfortunately, the Third Generation DLP solutions could not scale in their effectiveness and usability beyond the simple and trivial use case scenarios in real-life enterprise deployment.

4th Gen DLP:

Fourth Generation DLP solutions obviate the critical issues of the previous generations as well as address the challenge of ‘Malicious Data Leak’ scenarios. The Fourth Generation DLP solutions do not depend on manual processes and hence, are non-susceptible to human errors and invulnerable to purposeful acts of ‘Malicious Data Leak’.

The key differentiating characteristics of Fourth Generation DLP solutions are the ability to automate the functions of data/information identification, classification, analysis and enforcement. The Fourth Generation DLP solutions must deliver;

1. Automated Classification of data/content
2. Automated Generation of Policies
3. Automated Enforcement of Advanced Access Control

Fig-2: Key Components of Fourth Generation Data Leak Prevention Solutions

Information Security Compliance Enforcer (ISE) – a Fourth Generation DLP System:

GhangorCloud’s Information Security Compliance Enforcer (ISE) is the pioneering 4th Generation Data Leak Prevention (DLP) solution that has been built from the ground up to address the deficiencies and constraints of the previous generation DLP solutions.

As illustrated in Figure-3, the ISE platform is comprised of key technology components and sophisticated data security features such as Automated Security based Data Classification, Data Identification, Automated Policy Synthesis, and Advanced Access Control. The ISE platform eliminates Manual Classification and Tagging, eliminates the pre-processing cost, and enables protection against Evasion Attacks, thus enabling true ‘Malicious DLP’.

Fig-3: Information Security Compliance Enforcer (ISE) Platform, 4th Generation DLP

Conclusion

Ever since the inception of data leak prevention solutions (circa Year-1998 to date), the data leak scenarios and data leak exfiltration attacks have tremendously evolved into more and more complex data security threats. The advent of Advanced Persistent Threats has further compounded the challenge from Accidental to Malicious Data Leak and Exfiltration Attacks. Traditional 3rd Generation DLP solutions (circa Year-2002 to date) seriously lack in their ability to address these advanced and ever-evolving data leak and exfiltration scenarios. A new set of technological innovations is essential to address the new and emerging Data Leak and Exfiltration Attack Vectors.

GhangorCloud’s unique (patented and patent-pending) 4th Generation DLP technologies address key issues and limitations in the existing traditional Data Leak/Theft Prevention solutions for Enterprise and Service Provider networks, while providing superior accuracy, performance and maintainability. GhangorCloud’s ISE product, which has a highly scalable architecture, can be quickly deployed across an enterprise. The ability to automatically identify content, automatically classify it, automatically generate security policies in real-time without requiring constant tedious manual intervention, and provide real-time protection against purposeful Malicious Data Leak makes it unique.

Our Offerings:

Data Leak and Exfiltration Protection (DLEP), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Accidental and Malicious Data Leak Prevention, Policy Enforcer, Policy Automation, Governance and Regulatory Compliance, Advanced Access Control, Auto Classification, Deep AI Platform, CyberSOC, Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Cloud Apps Control, Accidental Insider Protection