Time To Take Action Against Data Loss

They're out there, ready to snatch your company's most important data: organized cybercriminals, thieves looking to grab a wayward laptop, intruders using Web applications capable of extracting entire databases, malicious insiders hunting for ways to smuggle out valuable information. That's a lot of bad people, all eyeing your data.

Of course, you're complying with all the requirements designed to keep data safe--PCI, HIPAA, consumer privacy laws, whatever regulations affect your company. That makes sense since the IT Policy Compliance Group estimates that when the cost of data losses and spending on compliance are added up, companies at least break even, and at best stand to save up to 10 times as much as they spend on compliance (see "Why Compliance Pays").

Compliance and the risk reduction it entails is useful, but it doesn't do the whole job. You can't just blindly check off audit and compliance measures because they're included in a standard or law. For maximum savings and risk reduction, you have to actively protect your data with the appropriate measures for the threats specific to your environment.

There's no lack of tools available for mounting this defense. When we said we were doing a story on data security, more than 100 companies offered products. That makes sense, however, since just about everything in security ultimately is about data security. Certainly that's the case with traditional security measures like access control, encryption, and network monitoring. But it's the most recent crop of products focused on the threat of data leakage that we're zeroing in on. (See chart below for a full list of products considered.)