The implementation of DLP-system: step-by-step instruction

Do you want to control more carefully your employees’ activity and channels of communication which they use while working? Do you suspect that somebody leaks your sensitive data to unknown person? Don’t know where to begin? In this article, we will talk about the DLP-system implementation stages.

Stages of the DLP-system implementation:

Step 1. On this stage, the company defines why it needs DLP-system and what business segment should be protected. For example, the company suspects that somebody from development department sends sensitive information to third parties, then the company needs DLP-system to track communication processes and documents transmission and control employees in this segment.

Step 2. When the goal is set and business segment is determined, the company has to consider the situation in detail. On this stage, tactics and strategy of safeguarding are developed:

• The company determines what documents and employees’ actions should be tracked and what workstations and servers sensitive files are stored in;
• Then the company makes a list of user accounts, workstations, and servers that will be tracked;
• The company generates security policies. If one of employees violates the rules set, the system will notify an administrator who then can create an incident within the DLP-system and investigate it.

Step 3. When tactics and strategy are developed, the plan can be implemented. After the launch of SecureTower trial version is agreed on, our specialists will help you to install agents on users’ computers and configure the system according to parameters defined in step 2.

Step 4. The testing period often lasts 30 days. During that time, the agents store a great amount of information that shows the whole picture of what is going on in the company. Namely:

• The agent controls all communication channels: messengers, e-mails, social networks, cloud storages, web-sites. It tracks whom an employee communicates with, what is the aim of their communication, what messages they send and receive, how much time do they spend, for example, in social networks;
• The company can discover data leaks. It can observe all employees’ actions that gives an opportunity to analyze whether an employee communicates for business reasons or they leak data to unknown person;
• SecureTower shows the interactions between employees and customers. With its help, it is possible to analyze what employee’s actions are effective and what actions are not (for example, if an employee acts roughly or impudently, or they procrastinate). It means that the DLP-system creates conditions to control and enhance standards adopted in the organization.

You can configure DLP-system SecureTower to simply track correspondence or to get the whole picture of what is happening in the company by using video monitoring, keylogger, and other tools.

Step 5. The company gets the results of test usage of the system. Often the picture that the DLP-system shows (what is going on in the company, how do the employees work) differs dramatically from what the chief thinks about it. Using SecureTower, the company can observe the employees’ working process in every single detail, their interactions with each other and clients. On this stage, the CEO of the company decides whether it is reasonable to use the system further.

Even if the company cannot use the DLP-system further, it has all information collected during test period at its disposal. It can be exported and used outside the system as statistics data to control and enhance the effectiveness or as evidence base of incidents occurred.