As digital transformation continues to blossom and cloud adoption increases, we continue to see challenges crop up when it comes to traditional DLP solutions.
Setting aside the architectural and operational complexity and high cost that comes with traditional DLP, practitioners recognize that existing tools aren’t able to keep up. In fact, modern hybrid work business practices, coupled with an ever-increasing number of SaaS apps (35% increase in number of apps in use in 2022) and data that no longer sits in an on-premises data center, make it clear that the paradigm has shifted. Legacy DLP solutions are quickly going blind as they were designed for a perimeter-centric world.
To find a way forward, let’s take a deeper look at some of the major shortcomings of legacy DLP solutions and how DLP needs to evolve to keep organizations and their sensitive data safe.
Difficulties supporting cloud and hybrid work
Because traditional DLP solutions were architected as on-premises solutions and anchored by their on-premises infrastructure, they don’t naturally extend to cloud channels. DLP vendors initially found a workaround for data discovery in the cloud through clumsy ICAP integrations with CASB solutions, but this created the first big architectural limitations, which included:
- Disjointed technological environments
- Hard-to-reconcile policies
- Different enforcements
- Separate consoles
- Considerable latency to enforce protections
Cloud detection services with REST API connectors offered another approach to connect the on-premises DLP solutions and CASB. But this method only patched some of the problems as opposed to providing a real long-term solution.
What’s more, is that the risks to data have only grown as we’ve entered an increasingly hybrid-enabled work environment.
Hybrid work has resulted in organizations that are highly distributed with branch offices popping up around the globe as they continue to expand their business. And as a result, this growth has left organizations with the burden of having to deal with a sprawling DLP infrastructure, tied to on-premises