Organizations need better visibility into the use and movement of their sensitive data to meet privacy regulations and safeguard content.

The best approach toward data privacy and protection is a self-reporting file method, that automatically traces, gathers and records all document interactions without reliance on disparate network, application, and device logs. The same technology that enables self-reporting files is the foundation of a powerful data security approach – a file-centric method. Bridge both privacy and security gaps with a file-centric method that delivers deep data visibility and a strong front line defense for your sensitive data.

Traditional security and network tools create a patchwork approach to data visibility that is inadequate, impractical, and unsustainable.

You need visibility to know where your data is, who is using it, and how it changes throughout its lifecycle. Discovery and classification tools are a good start to find data and tag it for downstream controls.

However, to maintain control, you need deep visibility to track data as it travels, is accessed and transforms into other file types throughout its lifecycle. Cybersecurity and privacy teams are challenged to keep track of sensitive files. A file will be accessed by multiple systems, applications and devices as users share it internally and with external parties. With over 40 different security and IT operations tools used in a typical business, organizations struggle as they work to accumulate, correlate, and report file interactions.

This challenge grows as data visibility is often obscured when documents travel within the organization or shared externally to the organization and change either through duplication or revisions. Without proper data visibility, you can miss the moment sensitive information is shared, moved to a different location, changed, or deleted.

You must also have visibility into sensitive file interactions for data breach investigations and to comply with privacy regulations. Details must be readily available to support incident response teams; and privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA compel businesses to report on all data they hold regarding an individual within a specified period or be subject to fine.

KEY INSIGHT: Faced with millions of files and countless interactions across global networks with thousands of end points, organizations need a new way to track data use and movement.

Visibility gaps widen as three trends stress legacy infrastructure

IT, security and privacy professionals are working to address widening visibility gaps and overcome
the risk posed by:

• Exponential growth of unstructured data that includes strategic, operational and intellectual property
• COVID-driven remote workforces suddenly operating outside the corporate perimeter
• Privacy regulations increasingly focused on an individual’s rights to control their data used by businesses

Data proliferation is staggering, and unstructured data is rapidly growing, estimated to be 80% of a business’s data inventory. Unstructured data is routinely undermanaged and is hard to control and track as users take sensitive files from controlled repositories, store them on laptops, endpoints, and cloud services and share them in collaboration applications both internally and with external parties.

COVID-19 rapidly expanded the remote workforce and dissolved corporate perimeters. Sensitive data now resides on more unmanaged and shared devices. It travels on insecure networks and is used in unauthorized or non-compliant apps. All this is obscured from corporate oversight.

Privacy regulations have vaulted individual rights to the forefront. Right to be informed; right to be forgotten; and data residency all impose new demands on data visibility, tracing, control and reporting.