Data Exposure in Webmail. Or Pretty Much Any App.

Yesterday we saw news of another data breach involving the accidental emailing of high profile client data from a major financial services organization via Gmail. Even though there is growing awareness of cloud app vulnerabilities, the insider accident is the most common scenario when it comes to exposing sensitive data.

As SaaS adoption grows, we can expect to see more of this, and it won’t just be in email. Any app that enables content sharing is a candidate for data exposure. In the Netskope Active Platform, one out of every five cloud apps in use by our customers enables sharing, and 49 out of the 55 app categories we track have apps that enable sharing.

What can you do to mitigate this risk? Here are a few practices you can take to protect data in your cloud apps:

• Identify the sensitive data being uploaded to or residing within your cloud apps, whether webmail, a storage app, or one of the 49 other categories that enable content sharing.
• Understand what content is being uploaded to, or downloaded or shared from cloud apps, who it’s being shared with, and whether it’s being shared outside of the company.
• Control who can upload, download, or share content based on custom DLP profiles and those associated with your compliance requirements in a targeted set of apps where the risk is the highest.
• For the rest of your cloud apps, monitor for data loss across based on your DLP profiles across the board.
• Selectively encrypt the most sensitive data that’s being uploaded to or residing within your cloud apps.