Determining where confidential data resides

Based on experience from numerous Forcepoint DLP deployments, it appears that most sensitive company information resides in:

Corporate file servers and shared drives

To determine where confidential information is stored:

Ask: Talk to appropriate data owners within the organization to find relevant file servers and data stores.
This can uncover a large portion of the data that needs to be protected. Reviewing the locations that result from this process will likely reveal other critical data branchings and parallel storage places.
Discover: Define policies for data discovery, then use Forcepoint DLP to classify file servers, shared drives, and endpoints. This helps identify where data is located in the network.

Combining the results can provide a good idea of the location of the organization’s confidential information.

In-house databases

To understand which databases are critical:

Ask:
- Talk to people that manage in-house applications that rely on internal databases (such as customer relations, order processing, and accounting).
- Talk to database administrators to identify the most-accessed databases. The more a database is accessed, the more chances there are for data loss.
The IT department may be able to elaborate on the results of talking to both of these groups.
Discover: Define policies for database discovery, then use Forcepoint DLP to classify databases. This should let you know primarily where your vital records are located.

Combining the results can narrow down the most critical database servers, databases, and tables to protect.