Understanding Data Leakage and How Concentric AI Can Help Prevent It

It seems like it happens almost every day: a confidential data breach appears in the headlines. The damages are getting worse and the costs are escalating. In August, for example, MGM Resorts International suffered a cyberattack and reported the financial hit would approach $100 million USD.

With so much data to manage, businesses must balance innovative digital transformations with protecting their sensitive data. The potential for data leakage looms large.

Data leakage, while often unintentional, poses a substantial threat to organizations, carrying significant financial repercussions as well as the potential for reputational damage and operational setbacks.

Let’s explore data leakage, the ways it can happen, and how Concentric AI can help prevent it.

What is Data Leakage?

Data leakage occurs when confidential data, whether by human error or through negligent actions, finds its way outside the boundaries of an organizational. Unlike data exfiltration, data leakage might not always stem from malicious intent. However, data leakage can be equally damaging.

It could be an employee accidentally forwarding an email containing sensitive data to the wrong recipient, or even sharing that email with their own personal email account. Often, data leakage is due to misconfigurations that leave data exposed to unauthorized entities.

The implications of data leakage are wide-ranging, including legal consequences, loss of customer trust, and exposure of intellectual property to competitors.

What are some of the more common data leakage methods?

Accidental sharing: Sensitive data might be shared unintentionally with external parties due to misaddressed emails or incorrect file attachments. Sharing can also be with too many recipients or even with personal email accounts.

Cloud storage vulnerabilities: Data stored in the cloud may be exposed due to misconfigurations, inadequate access controls, or failure to administer secure data storage practices.

Removable media: Data transferred to external storage devices like USB drives or external hard drives without encryption or security checks may accessed by unauthorized individuals, especially if lost or stolen.

Insecure network traffic: Transmitting data over networks without deploying secure communication protocols such as VPNs or encrypted connections can leave data vulnerable to interception by malicious actors.

What are the data leakage concerns?

Human error: Simple mistakes, such as sending sensitive information to the wrong recipient, falling for a phishing email, or failing to securely store data can lead to unintended data exposure. These errors might stem from a lack of overall security awareness or not understanding how to securely handle data.

Inadequate training: Often, human error is due to not being adequately trained on the secure handling, storage, and transmission of sensitive data. As the threat landscape increases in complexity, awareness training becomes an even greater challenge.

System vulnerabilities: Weaknesses or vulnerabilities in systems, applications, or data storage solutions can be exploited by malicious actors to gain access to data. Unauthorized access may include exploiting software vulnerabilities, bypassing access controls, or other malicious activities.

Technological constraints: The lack of robust technological solutions — such as encryption, secure communication protocols, and secure data storage solutions — can leave data vulnerable to leakage. Examples include failure to implement robust access controls, lack of secure data transmission protocols, inadequate data encryption, or relying to heavily on employees to secure data.

How Concentric AI helps address data leakage challenges

In a nutshell, Concentric AI offers a robust Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution, providing organizations with a crystal-clear view into their sensitive data, identifying risks, and preventing data leakage.

Diving a little deeper, here’s how Concentric AI protects data against leakage.

Autonomous, Semantic-Based Data Discovery

Concentric AI Semantic Intelligence develops a semantic understanding of cloud data, and provides a thematic category-oriented view into all sensitive cloud data – from financial to intellectual property to business confidential to PII/PCI/PHI. Best of all, it’s all done without any rules, regex patterns or end user-involvement.

As your data landscape evolves, Concentric AI dynamically adapts, ensuring that new types of sensitive data are quickly identified and protected.

Automated Data Risk Identification and Remediation

Operating in real-time, Concentric’s Risk DistanceTM analysis compares each cloud data element to baseline security practices exhibited by semantically similar data. Risk is autonomously identified from inappropriate permissioning, risky sharing, unauthorized access, wrong location etc. Our solution not only identifies inappropriate user activity but also provides support for access control planning and data security posture management.

Most importantly, Concentric AI autonomously remediates these issues to prevent cloud data loss.

Effortless Implementation

Concentric AI’s solution is designed for seamless integration. With our agentless solution, there’s no need to install software on individual devices. This means no more compatibility issues and a streamlined deployment process.

Whether data resides in the cloud, on-premises, in structured databases, or unstructured repositories, Concentric AI ensures secure access and monitoring of all data in all locations.  Plus, our autonomous capabilities allow for minimal end-user involvement, streamlining the data protection process.

Concentric AI is easy to implement and designed to deliver value quickly. Organizations can see tangible benefits in days, not months, without any significant upfront work.

Want to see firsthand — with your own data — how you can quickly and easily deploy Concentric AI’s solution to leverage the power of AI to prevent data leakage? Book a demo today and experience the freedom of protecting your data without rules, regex, or end-user involvement.