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In IT circles, the year 2011 is now known as “The Year of the Breach”. Major companies such as RSA, Sony, Epsilon, PBS, Citigroup, etc. have experienced serious high profile attacks. Which begs the question: if major players such as these huge multi-million dollar companies are being breached, what does that mean for my company? How can I take adequate precautions to ensure that …

Working in IT for as long as I have, the general public often asserts that I have magical powers as I excitedly speak technological jargon while their eyes glaze over. I’m sure everyone in this industry has had similar experiences. However, it’s our job to translate our “techno geek mumbo jumbo” into broad terms for everyone to understand. …

In this post, I promise to cut to the chase after briefly summarizing my argument: the term “Data Loss Prevention” or “DLP” oversimplifies a technology that has the ability to dramatically alter the way we conceptualize and execute data protection strategies, particularly those designed to safeguard our most critical and sensitive information against loss driven by the mostly well-intentioned, but nevertheless misguided, hands of insiders (those trusted to not upload our corporate secrets to You Tube, Gmail or countless other public venues).

The term “Data Loss Prevention”, or “DLP” for short, is being used to universally describe any technology able to detect, and then react to, information matching one or more pre-defined patterns as it traverses network devices, servers or workstations. As is the case with the most promising and well-funded concepts (think “SaaS” or “Cloud Computing”), the term is altogether overused, fairly misleading and, as a result, not completely understood by the overwhelming majority of businesses that would benefit greatly by leveraging the technology within their respective environments.