Cloud Office Security

With the large-scale shift to the cloud in recent years, new challenges have arisen in the arena of data loss protection.

Companies have had to adapt their DLP and data security protocols to suit their evolving approaches to data storage.

Gartner Advice

While many powerful platforms have been produced by the market to secure cloud data, most have remained hobbled by a fundamental flaw.

In a recent white paper on cloud security, industry leader Gartner[i] laid out the insufficiencies in most cloud-focused solutions: “Most approaches to protecting cloud data rely on content or metadata detection methods, which can be problematic and inaccurate on several levels, with text and images sometimes trivially bypassed.” The report goes on to discuss in depth how gaps in cloud technology convergence will often result in incomplete data protection. This leaves multiple avenues of data visibility potential attackers can capitalize as well as numerous holes to data visibility.

Fundamentally Flawed

Gartner offers some sound advice for firms looking to shore up their cloud protection. Their suggestions to focus on team interactions with data and email security issues would benefit the vast majority of companies. But the list of proposed measures doesn’t go to the root of the challenge faced by cloud data managers: most DLP platforms are simply not designed to keep a handle on the diverse data types contained in the cloud. In this way, the central problem facing the cloud is still–like it has been for years–an issue of accuracy.

What makes GTB’s platforms unique is its innovative approach to data loss prevention. Using patented artificial intelligence models, the GTB data loss prevention programs use an intelligent, learning-based approach system to manage sensitive data. Rather than rely on set models, GTB programs regularly analyze data with intelligent algorithms. This approach virtually eliminates false positives by honing in on relevant data and only real exfiltration threats. False negatives are also prevented with these methods. Based on the indicators learned from already identified files and data streams, GTB can track sensitive content even when elements of a file or data stream are changed.

Bolstering the cloud model specifically is GTB’s added component of Optical Character Recognition or OCR, a digital technique for analyzing images forms and extracting the text allowing them to be processed like a normal electronic document using DLP functionality. Using OCR protocols, images can be analyzed just like any other document or file during the transfer process – whether via email or when being uploaded or downloaded, to or from the cloud.

By combining super accuracy with efficiency, GTB provides both the security and assurance that meet the needs of modern cloud management.

[i] Cool Vendors in Cloud Office Security, Gartner, Published 1 May 2020 – ID G00721143