Understanding Data Protection Needs in a Cloud-enabled Hybrid Work World

Today, Netskope partnered with the Cloud Security Alliance to release the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Security Survey Report, a survey focused on data protection needs in cloud and hybrid work environments. Unsurprisingly, the report found that the biggest pain point organizations identify with trying to modernize their data protection strategy is that current DLP deployments show limitations when it comes to cloud and remote work use cases, and they are a nightmare to manage. Especially when you consider that cloud is already the predominant means for transferring and sharing data, based on the report. It’s everything anyone who knows the current state of DLP would recognize: false positives, limited support, un-integrated solutions, products that are retrofitted (not built) for the cloud and, therefore, poorly applied. Many organizations are often forced to adopt multiple DLP solutions in order to fill the gaps. So what’s to be done about this?

In my recent blog on the major shortcomings of traditional data loss prevention (DLP), I called out that trying to provide hybrid work coverage using traditional DLP tools is contributing to challenges with sprawl, given that largely on-premises architecture likely needs to be replicated for branch offices. This is obviously unsustainable when all of us are, now, working from anywhere. The top challenges with managing DLP cited in the CSA report—including overall management difficulties, false positives, the need for manual version upgrades, and deployment complexity—are only going to worsen. 

Those challenges also run counter to where the proverbial “puck is going”; nearly three quarters of organizations surveyed, for example, are actively working on zero trust projects, and nearly all of those include DLP as part of those strategies. But organizations will struggle to fully embrace zero trust if zero trust principles can’t be smoothly applied at every interaction with data—a major shortcoming that the sprawling mess of current and legacy DLP can’t solve. 

The good news is that comprehensive, powerfully accurate, easy-to-use, cloud-delivered DLP is available today, and can be elegantly integrated with most organizations’ existing security controls. Adopting a zero trust security posture means using all context and risk awareness across cloud and hybrid work environments. 

I invite you to read more about survey results, get your copy of the full Cloud Security Alliance Report here.