What is Data Loss Prevention?

What Is Data Loss Prevention?

Data loss prevention (DLP) is a set of tools and processes designed to prevent the loss, unauthorized access, or mishandling of sensitive data. This involves locating sensitive data, monitoring its movement, and enforcing policies to intervene automatically when violations are detected.

Why Is DLP Security Important for Businesses?

DLP security has become essential for any enterprise managing sensitive data, particularly in light of the increasing number of data breaches and stricter regulations. In 2024, the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.9 million, with regulated industries facing even more severe consequences.

Industries such as healthcare, finance, and government, where vast amounts of sensitive information are processed on a daily basis, require robust data protection strategies. When integrated with advanced threat detection and response capabilities, DLP helps your enterprise to store, process, and share critical information securely.

In June 2025, researchers uncovered a database of 16 billion stolen credentials (the largest single exposure on record) from a mix of infostealer malware, credential stuffing sets, and recycled old leaks. One in eight of those records belong to corporate email or cloud accounts, allowing attackers to subsequently exfiltrate data discreetly. These credential leaks could be a major warning sign for larger data loss events.

How Does DLP Work?

A DLP policy works by classifying sensitive data, defining who can access or modify it, and enforcing these rules in real time. Here’s how a DLP workflow looks like:

• Discovery: Protection begins with identifying the sensitive data you have and its location. The DLP solution scans your on-premises servers, endpoints, SaaS applications, and cloud storage environments to create a comprehensive inventory of sensitive data, including customer records, intellectual property, and regulated information.
• Classification: Data is categorized based on sensitivity levels. Using a DLP platform, security and compliance teams will decide who should have access and which actions are acceptable or prohibited. Many platforms utilize automated techniques, such as content inspection, keyword matching, and machine learning, to ensure effective and consistent data classification.
• Monitoring: DLP continuously monitors data usage and movement across your organization, detecting unauthorized access or potential data breaches in real time. The platform generates alerts whenever anomalies are detected, such as unusual login patterns or attempts to transfer large volumes of sensitive data.
• Policy enforcement: A significant aspect of data loss prevention technology is the enforcement of security policies and rules to prevent unauthorized access or sharing of sensitive information. If a user action conflicts with established DLP policies, such as sending client data to a personal email or uploading sensitive files to unauthorized cloud services, the DLP solution can automatically alert your security team, quarantine the data, block the transfer, or require user justification.
• Reporting: Centralized reporting and analytics reveal policy violations and user trends, allowing your security team data to fine-tune rules and identify vulnerabilities. These insights support effective incident response while ensuring your organization meets evolving regulatory compliance requirements.

Types of Data Threats DLP Protects Against

DLP shields your organization from external breaches, malware-driven exfiltration, ransomware extortion, insider risks, and everyday human errors, ensuring sensitive information stays within approved channels.

The following are the main threats that DLP protects against:

Cyberattack

A cyberattack is a deliberate attempt by hackers to breach systems. Their goal is to steal, modify, or destroy data. Our investigations reveal an emerging pattern in which highly skilled threat actors combine multiple attack vectors.

Rather than relying on single-vector approaches, they orchestrate complex campaigns that begin with spear-phishing, escalate through lateral movement, and culminate in data exfiltration or DDoS attacks while evading traditional detection methods. These threats also include stealthy spyware deployments that can silently harvest sensitive information.

Learn more about how you can detect and remove spyware from mobile devices in our in-depth analysis of Pegasus spyware.

Malware

Malware, short for “malicious software,” represents a persistent threat to your enterprise security. This broad category includes everything from viruses to worms and spyware.

Our incident response team regularly investigates cases where malware infiltrates systems through email attachments, phishing links, or compromised downloads.

One of the most damaging variants is the Remote Access Trojan (RAT), which enables attackers to access infected systems and covertly steal sensitive data remotely.

Once inside, it can cause widespread damage across your network, steal sensitive data, and paralyze business operations. Early detection depends on continuously monitoring your environment for Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), such as suspicious file hashes, rogue domains, or unusual process activity that signal an infection in progress.

Ransomware

Ransomware, a subset of malware, represents one of the fastest-growing and most advanced threats in cybersecurity. These attacks encrypt business-critical data and demand payment for its release, often threatening to publish or destroy stolen information if demands aren’t met.

Our researchers closely examined this threat in action during the 2021 REvil ransomware attacks. This notorious threat actor’s ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform encrypted and exfiltrated data before demanding substantial ransoms from high-profile targets, including JBS USA, a major meat processing company.

Effective ransomware protection demands a comprehensive security approach that combines proactive threat detection, incident response capabilities, and robust defense mechanisms.

Insider Risks

Insider threats are posed by your employees, contractors, or partners who have authorized access to sensitive data. In a 2023 investigation dubbed “Insider’s Gambit,” our Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) team uncovered how a privileged user bypassed security controls to siphon funds from a payment processing company.

The incident highlighted how traditional rule-based DLP solutions often fail to detect skilled insider threats who understand and exploit legitimate access patterns. Whether intentional (malicious actions) or accidental (unintentional sharing of confidential files), insider threats can lead to serious data breaches.

Unintentional Exposure

Human error remains one of the leading causes of data breaches. Something as simple as accidentally sending sensitive documents to the wrong recipient, downloading harmful attachments, or misconfiguring cloud storage permissions can expose sensitive information to unauthorized parties. Attack surface management helps you identify and remediate these potential exposure points before they lead to breaches.

Phishing

Today’s phishing campaigns demonstrate unprecedented precision in their targeting and execution. Through our phishing and scam protection, we’ve observed how these attacks effectively bypass traditional email filters and appear to be from legitimate sources. Modern phishing campaigns can target your entire organization, mimicking legitimate business communications so convincingly that even experienced professionals fall victim.

Real-World Examples of Data Theft

As a leading provider of cyber threat intelligence and incident response investigations, we’ve observed numerous cases of threat actors evolving from simple data theft to complex, multi-stage operations that bypass conventional security measures.

Through our Threat Intelligence platform, we’ve assisted security teams in detecting and responding to these multi-stage attacks before significant data loss occurs. Below are a few case studies with expert reports from Group-IB High-Tech Crime Investigations unit:

• Our investigation into the Anunak/Carbanak campaign reveals how attackers systematically compromised financial institutions across Asia and Europe. Using advanced malware and spear-phishing emails, they manipulated card processing systems and ATM networks. The operation netted criminals more than $25 million, demonstrating how targeted attacks against financial data can scale into massive criminal enterprises.

• In 2020, we uncovered a highly targeted phishing campaign against 156 high-ranking officers from financial services companies, law firms, and real estate groups across multiple regions. Dubbed PerSwaysion, the campaign involved threat actors using compromised Microsoft Office 365 emails to send malicious PDF attachments to trusted contacts for further supply-chain attacks. This allowed them access to highly sensitive information stored in the victims’ accounts, such as financial transactions, legal agreements, and client data.
• In another case, our researchers uncovered four more attacks by RedCurl, a corporate cyber espionage threat actor that carried out targeted attacks aimed at stealing intellectual property from organizations. The group infiltrated corporate networks across various industries and exfiltrated valuable trade secrets using tactics such as spear-phishing, custom loaders, and lateral movement, placing targeted organizations at a severe competitive disadvantage.

Core Components of an Effective DLP Strategy

An effective DLP strategy is built on several interconnected components that protect data throughout its entire lifecycle, such as continuous monitoring, data encryption, access control, and data leak detection. For example, your financial data may require encryption and strict access controls, while internal documents may need to be monitored for unusual access patterns.

Together, these components ensure that sensitive data remains secure whether it’s being stored, transmitted, or accessed.

Continuous Monitoring

When applications or users are actively processing your data, DLP tools ensure it isn’t misused or leaked by observing user behavior and application activity in real time. For example, they can detect unusual access patterns or attempts to copy confidential information to unauthorized applications. Without continuous monitoring and real-time alerts, you risk leaving valuable data exposed to both internal and external threats.

It is equally important to monitor external channels for leaked or stolen data. Group-IB Digital Risk Protection serves this role by analyzing your digital presence across a range of open and dark web sources to uncover code repositories and other private information belonging to your organization. Using a three-stage takedown approach, it removes violations such as phishing, scams, or impersonation to safeguard your brand and users.

Data Encryption and Access Control

Strong encryption and access control form the foundation of effective data protection. Encryption ensures that even if sensitive data is intercepted, it remains unreadable without proper authorization. For example, an intercepted file containing customer credit card information would be useless to attackers without the decryption key.

As your data moves across networks through email, file sharing, or other channels, your DLP solution encrypts communications and filters network traffic for sensitive content. Our Business Email Protection solution helps protect data in motion by detecting, blocking, and analyzing all email-borne attacks, including phishing and malware, that typically precede data leak incidents.

Access control limits who can view or share sensitive information within your organization. To reduce the risk of accidental or malicious exposure, you can implement least privilege access and Zero Trust security to ensure that employees have access only to the data necessary for their role.

For data stored in databases, servers, or the cloud, DLP tools implement robust access controls, encryption, and continuous monitoring. Solutions like Attack Surface Management play a crucial role in protecting data at rest by identifying potential vulnerabilities in your storage systems before attackers can exploit them.

Data Leak Detection

Another core component of a DLP strategy is data leak detection. Effective data leakage prevention involves monitoring for any signs that sensitive data is being exfiltrated or exposed. Such anomalies trigger real-time alerts that include automated takedown and mitigation processes, allowing your security team to investigate and prevent potential leaks.

Integrating DLP alerts with broader security monitoring, such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) or detection and response systems, ensures that these events are correlated with other threat indicators to help you understand the full scope of an incident. Group-IB Managed XDR platform detects threats in real time, enabling immediate responses by analyzing data from your DLP tools. It also helps to secure corporate email in the cloud or on-premises by detecting and disrupting malware delivery, spam, phishing, and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks.

In 2022, the Conti ransomware group published data belonging to 156 companies on its DLS after failed ransom negotiations. This data ranged from intellectual property and business contracts to personal customer information, allowing other criminals to potentially exploit. These attacks emphasize the need for continuous monitoring of external sources for mentions of your organization’s data to prevent a breach from becoming public.

Benefits of a DLP Solution

DLP solutions offer your organization benefits such as protection against data breaches, maintaining regulatory compliance, increased visibility into data usage, and enhanced incident response capabilities.

We’ll explore these benefits in more detail below.

Protecting Sensitive Data

A key benefit of DLP is the comprehensive protection of sensitive data, such as customer records, financial information, trade secrets, and intellectual property. Real-time alerts enable your security team to intervene promptly, minimizing the risk of data loss. For example, if an employee inadvertently attempts to upload sensitive documents to a personal cloud account, you can mitigate the situation through DLP to prevent data exposure before it occurs.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

DLP plays a vital role in maintaining compliance with data protection regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in healthcare, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) in finance. DLP capabilities give your security teams the visibility to monitor data flows and generate compliance reports, making it easier to prove that data is handled properly.

Increased Visibility into Data Usage

Your security team gains granular insight into how data is accessed, edited, and shared throughout the organization. Continuous monitoring across endpoints, networks, and cloud services provides real-time insights into user interactions to help detect unusual patterns. Clear dashboards and reports further empower decision-makers to refine data-handling policies and workflows.

Improved Incident Response

DLP tools enhance your organization’s incident response capability by providing context-rich alerts whenever access rights are violated. This capability accelerates containment and reduces the overall impact of data breaches.

What Type of DLP Solution is Right for Your Business?

Modern DLP solutions are available in various types, including network, endpoint, and cloud-based options, each designed to address specific security challenges. Depending on your organization’s infrastructure, you may need security controls across multiple areas:

Network-Based DLP

Network-based DLP solutions track data as it moves across your network. They analyze email communications, web traffic, and file transfers in real time to prevent unauthorized data transmission. Group-IB Business Email Protection replaces legacy systems and the built-in security controls offered by third-party email providers to secure your organization’s data sent through email communications.

Endpoint-Based DLP

An endpoint-based DLP solution monitors suspicious activities, such as unusual file transfers or unauthorized access attempts. As remote work becomes the norm, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) has become crucial. It provides granular control over how users interact with sensitive data on devices like laptops, smartphones, and desktops.

Group-IB’s endpoint security solution is a key component of the Managed XDR platform. Native interaction with Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and Malware Detonation Platform expands its potential and supplies the most relevant security data gathered from all available sources.

Cloud-Based DLP

Cloud DLP solutions provide SaaS applications, cloud storage, and cross-platform environments against unauthorized access or data sharing. Safeguarding data in these environments has emerged as a top priority as more businesses migrate their operations to cloud-based services.

Based on your organization’s needs and how data is stored, you can choose to rely on a single DLP solution or combine endpoint, network, and cloud tools to create a layered defense.

The right type of DLP solution will also depend on your organization’s data protection priorities, which are influenced by the industry. For example, a biotech company may consider proprietary research data as its most valuable asset to protect, whereas a financial firm must prioritize customer records.

Essential Features To Look for in a DLP Solution

When evaluating DLP solutions, the essential features to look for include broad coverage across all data channels with intelligent-driven detection and seamless integration into your existing environment.

These features ensure the DLP can actually prevent modern data leaks (which often involve cloud apps, insider abuse, AI usage, and ransomware behavior) while minimizing false positives and business disruption. We’ll break this down further in the following.

1. Comprehensive Data Discovery

A DLP solution must discover sensitive data everywhere it resides. This includes scanning unstructured data (such as documents, PDFs, and images) for content that matches sensitive patterns or keywords. Modern DLP solutions incorporate machine learning (ML) models and Large Language Models (LLMs) for classification, allowing recognition of sensitive data in free-form text or even code with significantly fewer false positives.

Ask: Can the solution extend beyond regex patterns and fixed rules to identify sensitive data that meets your organization’s compliance and risk assessment requirements?

2. Coverage Across Critical Channels

A modern DLP solution should provide seamless coverage across endpoints, email, web gateways, cloud storage, and SaaS apps like Slack or Microsoft 365. This unified approach ensures policies remain consistent everywhere data travels, protecting it both inside and outside the traditional corporate network perimeter.

Ask: How broad is your DLP visibility, and does it have the ability to prevent data loss at all potential points of exfiltration?

3. Real-Time Monitoring and Enforcement

Look for DLP solutions that work in real-time with the ability to instantly block violations and can feed alerts to centralized security operations. For example, sending DLP alerts to a SOC team or automated response system to ensure that any potential breaches are addressed as a top priority.

Ask: Is the solution capable of integrating at both endpoint and network-proxy levels to terminate a live connection the moment a DLP policy is breached?

4. Flexible Policy Management

Most leading DLP solutions come with pre-built policy templates for standard regulations, which can speed up deployment. However, it should support flexible policy configuration since every organization’s data and risks are unique. An intuitive central management interface enables easy tailoring of policies to specific data types, user groups, and scenarios, allowing for effective enforcement without complex administration.

Ask: Can you easily tune policies (adjust thresholds, add trusted recipients, or layer multiple conditions) and simulate in audit mode before full enforcement?

5. Integration and Ecosystem Support

Legacy DLP tools often fail because they are too static or siloed. Modern solutions should support your existing security infrastructure, such as SIEM, SOAR, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and encryption tools. Integration with broader security frameworks, such as Zero Trust or Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), ensures that your DLP strategy aligns seamlessly with other protective layers.

Ask: Can it send alerts to your SIEM in native Syslog/CEF/JSON without additional connectors or custom parsing?

6. Advanced Analytics for Anomaly Detection

A robust DLP solution uses advanced user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) to detect unusual data access or movement patterns. This predictive approach helps detect potential threats early, such as unauthorized insider activity or compromised accounts, even before explicit policy violations occur.

Ask: Can the analytics correlate activity across endpoints, cloud services, and email to identify multi-step exfiltration attempts that single sensors might miss?

7. Cloud-Native Deployment

Cloud-native DLP solutions offer scalability and flexibility, thereby reducing the complexity and overhead typically associated with traditional on-premises systems. Low-code deployment methods and lightweight endpoint agents streamline implementation, allowing your security team to focus on threats rather than infrastructure management.

Ask: Does it deploy natively in the cloud and integrate with hybrid environments, and will it scale on demand as your data footprint grows without requiring additional on-prem hardware?

How Group-IB Strengthens Your DLP Strategy

Through thousands of incident response engagements, we’ve observed how threat actors specifically target gaps between protection layers. They don’t just exploit technical vulnerabilities—they weaponize organizational blindspots, turning routine business processes into data exfiltration channels.

While DLP tools form one part of the solution, comprehensive data protection requires a multi-layered approach combining threat detection, rapid incident response, and extensive monitoring.

Group-IB Threat Intelligence and Attack Surface Management services offer a context-driven DLP strategy to ensure your sensitive information remains protected, whether from accidental exposure or malicious actions. They help you:

• Block unauthorized emails containing confidential attachments with Business Email Protection to prevent data theft.
• Prevent sensitive files from being uploaded to unsecured cloud storage.
• Detect unusual patterns, like excessive file downloads by an employee, which may indicate insider threats.

Our solutions for regulatory compliance strengthen your overall DLP strategy by identifying potentially non-compliant data flows, enabling quick remediation before regulatory penalties arise while maintaining trust with your customers.

Don’t wait for a breach to highlight data security gaps. Learn more about data loss protection solutions to strengthen your security posture. Or contact our experts today for a consultation on what an effective DLP strategy looks like in practice.