By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    improving patient experience
    6 Ways to Improve Patient Satisfaction Within Hospitals
    December 1, 2021
    degree for healthcare job
    What Are The Health Benefits Of Having A Degree?
    March 9, 2022
    custom software development is changing healthcare
    Digital Customer Journey Mapping and its Importance for Healthcare
    July 21, 2022
    Latest News
    Grounded Healing: A Natural Ally for Sustainable Healthcare Systems
    May 16, 2025
    Learn how to Renew your Medical Card in West Virginia
    May 16, 2025
    Choosing the Right Supplement Manufacturer for Your Brand
    May 1, 2025
    Engineering Temporary Hospitals for Extreme Weather
    April 24, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Can Thinking Younger Make You Live Longer?
    April 20, 2011
    Image
    Obesity’s Outlook Unchanged
    June 13, 2011
    When It’s An Emergency Elderly Not Treated As Well in Hospitals
    July 16, 2011
    Latest News
    Building Smarter Care Teams: Aligning Roles, Structure, and Clinical Expertise
    May 18, 2025
    The Critical Role of Healthcare in Personal Injury Recovery: A Comprehensive Guide for Victims
    May 14, 2025
    The Backbone of Successful Trials: Clinical Data Management
    April 28, 2025
    Advancing Your Healthcare Career through Education and Specialization
    April 16, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Dealing with DLP and privacy
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Technology > Dealing with DLP and privacy
Technology

Dealing with DLP and privacy

Danny Lieberman
Last updated: August 16, 2015 2:57 pm
Danny Lieberman
Share
8 Min Read
SHARE

Dealing with DLP and privacy

It’s a long hot summer here in the Middle East and with 2/3 of  the office out on vacation, you have some time to reflect on data security. Or on the humidity.  Or on a cold beer.

Contents
Dealing with DLP and privacyDealing with DLP and privacyWhat is DLP and what are the privacy concerns?DLP rules and policies are content-centric not user-centric.Making your data governance policy work for your employeesIn summary:

Dealing with DLP and privacy

It’s a long hot summer here in the Middle East and with 2/3 of  the office out on vacation, you have some time to reflect on data security. Or on the humidity.  Or on a cold beer.

Maybe you are working on building a business case for DLP technology like Websense or Symantec or Verdasys, or Mcafee or Fidelis in your organization.  Or maybe you  already purchased DLP technology and you’re embroiled in turf wars that have put your DLP implementation at a standstill as one of your colleagues is claiming that there are employee privacy issues with DLP and you’re trying to figure out how to get the project back on track after people get back from their work and play vacations in Estonia and brushing up on their hacking skills.

Unlike firewall/IPS, DLP is content-centric. It is technology that drives straight to the core of business asset protection and business process.  This frequently generates opposition from people who own business assets and manage business process. They may have legitimate concerns regarding the cost-effectiveness of DLP as a data security countermeasure.

More Read

tech use in healthcare
Harnessing the Power of Technology to Shape the Future of Proactive Health and Disease Diagnostics
Recognize This Face?
The Healthcare Journey to Value – Collaboration Is Key
Titanium: The Latest Building Block for The Future Of Medicine
Sutures, Staples and Other Fading Technologies

But – people who oppose DLP on grounds of potential employee privacy violations might be selling sturm and drang to further a political agenda.   If you’re not sure about this – ask them what they’ve done recently to prevent cyber-stalking and sexual harassment in the workplace. 

For sure, there are countries such as France and Germany where any network or endpoint monitoring that touches employees is verboten or interdit as the case may be; but if you are in Israel, the US or the UK, you will want to read on.

What is DLP and what are the privacy concerns?

DLP (data loss prevention) is a solution for monitoring/preventing sensitive outbound content not activity at an endpoint. This is the primary mission. DLP is often a misnomer, as DLP is more often than not, DLD – data loss detection but whatever…Network DLP solutions intercept content from the network and endpoint DLP agents intercept content by hooking into Windows operating system events.  Most of the DLP vendors offer an integrated network DLP and endpoint DLP solution in order to control removable devices in addition to content leaving network egress points. A central command console analyzes the intercepted content and generates security events, visualizes them and stores forensics as part of generating actionable intelligence. Data that is not part of the DLP forensics package is discarded.

In other words, DLP is not about reading your employees email on their PC.  It’s about keeping the good stuff inside the company.    If you want to mount surveillance on your users, you have plenty of other (far cheaper) options like browser history capturer or key loggers. Your mileage will vary and this blog does not provide legal guidance but technically – it’s not a problem.

DLP rules and policies are content-centric not user-centric.

A DLP implementation will involve writing custom content signatures (for example to detect top-secret projects by keyword, IP or source code) or selecting canned content signatures from a library (for example credit cards). 

The signatures are then combined into a policy which maps to the company’s data governance policy – for example “Protect top-secret documents from leaking to the competition”. 

One often combines server endpoints and Web services to make a more specific policy like “Alert if top-secret documents from Sharepoint servers are not sent via encrypted channels to authorized server destinations“. 

In 13 DLP installations in 3 countries, I never saw a policy that targeted a specific user endpoint. The reason for this is that it is far easier using DLP content detection to pickup endpoint violations then to white list and black list endpoints which in a large organization with lots of wireless and mobile devices is an exercise in futility.  

We often hear privacy concerns from people who come from the traditional firewall/IPS world but the firewall/IPS paradigm breaks when you have a lot of rules and endpoint IP addresses and that is why none of the firewall vendors like Checkpoint ever succeeded in selling the internal firewall concept. 

Since DLP is part of the company data governance enforcement, it is commonly used as a tool to reinforce policy such as not posting company assets to Facebook. 

It is important to emphasize again, that DLP is an alert generation and management technology not a general purpose network traffic recording tool – which you can do for free using a Netoptics tap and  Wireshark.

 Any content interception technology can be abused when in the wrong hands or in the right hands and wrong mission.  Witness NSA. 

Making your data governance policy work for your employees

Many companies, (Israeli companies in particular) don’t have a data governance policy but if they do, it should cover the entire space of protecting employees in the workplace from cyber-threats.

An example of using DLP to protect employees are the threat scenarios of cyber-stalking, sexual harassment or drug trafficking in the workplace where DLP can be used to quickly (as in real-time) create very specific content rules and then refined to include specific endpoints to catch forensics and offenders in real-time. Just like inCSI New York New York.

In summary:

There are 3 key use cases for DLP in the context of privacy:

  1. Privacy compliance (for example PCI, HIPAA, US State and EU privacy laws) can be a trigger for installing DLP. This requires appropriate content rules that key to identifying PHI or PII.
  2. Enforcement of your corporate  data governance and compliance policies where privacy is an ancillary concern.   This requires appropriate content rules for IP, suppliers and sensitive projects. So long as you do not target endpoints in your DLP rules, you will be generating security events and collecting forensics that do not infringe on employee privacy.   In some countries like France and Germany this may still be an issue.  Ask your lawyer.
  3. Employee workplace protection – DLP can be an outstanding tool for mitigating and investigating cyber threats in the workplace and at the very least a great tool for security awareness and education. Ask your lawyer.

If you liked this or better yet hated it,  contact  me.  I am a professional security analyst specializing in HIPAA compliance and medical device security and I’m based in Israel and always looking for interesting and challenging projects.

Idea for the post prompted by Ariel Evans.

Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

Clinical Expertise
Building Smarter Care Teams: Aligning Roles, Structure, and Clinical Expertise
Health care
May 18, 2025
Grounded Healing: A Natural Ally for Sustainable Healthcare Systems
Grounded Healing: A Natural Ally for Sustainable Healthcare Systems
Health
May 15, 2025
Learn how to Renew your Medical Card in West Virginia
Learn how to Renew your Medical Card in West Virginia
Health
May 15, 2025
Dr. Klaus Rentrop Shares Acute Myocardial Infarction heart treatment
Dr. Klaus Rentrop Shares Acute Myocardial Infarction
Cardiology
May 13, 2025

You Might also Like

Mobile Medical Diabetes Pump Devices–Hacking Possible

August 8, 2011
Wellframe ehealth
eHealthMedical InnovationsMedical RecordsMobile HealthTechnologyWellness

How Smartphone Apps Are Expanding the Role of EMRs

May 16, 2014
Sealants-change-total-market
Technology

Wound Closure Market Shifts From Traditional to Advance Products

October 6, 2011

Doctors and Nurses in a Twit about Technology Destroying Healthcare

June 2, 2014
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?