A Survey of Data Leakage Detection and Prevention Solutions

Book excerpt: SpringerBriefs present concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications across a wide spectrum of fields. Featuring compact volumes of 50 to 100 pages (approximately 20,000- 40,000 words), the series covers a range of content from professional to academic. Briefs allow authors to present their ideas and readers to absorb them with minimal time investment. As part of Springer’s eBook collection, SpringBriefs are published to millions of users worldwide. Information/Data Leakage poses a serious threat to companies and organizations, as the number of leakage incidents and the cost they inflict continues to increase. Whether caused by malicious intent, or an inadvertent mistake, data loss can diminish a company’s brand, reduce shareholder value, and damage the company’s goodwill and reputation. This book aims to provide a structural and comprehensive overview of the practical solutions and current research in the DLP domain. This is the first comprehensive book that is dedicated entirely to the field of data leakage and covers all important challenges and techniques to mitigate them. Its informative, factual pages will provide researchers, students and practitioners in the industry with a comprehensive, yet concise and convenient reference source to this fascinating field. We have grouped existing solutions into different categories based on a described taxonomy. The presented taxonomy characterizes DLP solutions according to various aspects such as: leakage source, data state, leakage channel, deployment scheme, preventive/detective approaches, and the action upon leakage. In the commercial part we review solutions of the leading DLP market players based on professional research reports and material obtained from the websites of the vendors. In the academic part we cluster the academic work according to the nature of the leakage and protection into various categories. Finally, we describe main data leakage scenarios and present for each scenario the most relevant and applicable solution or approach that will mitigate and reduce the likelihood and/or impact of the leakage scenario.