Computerworld’s security blog talks about Six Ways to Stop Data Leaks. I have taken the liberty of renaming it "avoid" data leaks in my own title, since security breaches are more than likely to occur even with the use of best practices. Nonetheless, we should take the precautions offered in the article.

These six tips will help you prevent data leaks from within the firewall - breaches and misappropriations of data by your employees.

1. Get a handle on the data - know where sensitive and proprietary data is within your network. Categorize data and choose controls for each categorization.
2. Monitor content - you can be connected to any number of networks, so monitoring the flow is important. This can include using software to inspect and/or encrypt email, P2P, IM, and FTP.
3. Monitor database access and activity. Encrypt sensitive information.
4. Limit privledges - monitor access and set controls on who sees what. Have alerts for unauthorized uses. Enforce your policies.
5. Cover endpoints - laptops, jump drives, etc. This goes back to #2 and being able to see an audit trail of how data is being used and by whom.
6. Centralize intellectual property data - making it easier to keep secure.

There are software solutions now that will help you with every step of your security efforts. Securing data is becoming increasingly complex, but also increasingly important.

Tags: data leaks, data breaches, securing data, data security, network security