Top Strategies for Preventing Accidental Data Shares in Real Time

In today’s cybersecurity landscape, it’s not enough to guard against external threats. Employees have access to so much sensitive information and so many ways to share it that it’s easier than ever to leak data accidentally. These accidental data shares can jeopardize your organization’s compliance standing, expose your systems to threat actors, and cost you business.

Everyone makes mistakes. But with the right mixture of policy and security tools, you can ensure your employees don’t unintentionally put confidential data in the wrong hands.

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The danger of accidental data shares

From the Marine Corps to the Australian finance department, you can find accidental data breach examples almost anywhere. Each time, the mistake is slightly different. Workers might share unencrypted data with the wrong email distribution list, embed unintended data in an email, or even paste that data into generative AI such as ChatGPT. When they do, they may expose sensitive assets to outside users with potentially disastrous results.

According to IBM research, accidental data loss and lost or stolen devices constitute around 6% of all cybersecurity breaches. The combination of downtime, regulatory fines, lost business, and more brings the average cost of accidental data shares to $4.28 million.

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How to prevent accidental data shares

Regularly refresh employee training

Cybersecurity starts with your employees. Each one needs to understand your data loss prevention (DLP) policies to follow them. Use rigorous cybersecurity training to outline the risks of non-compliance, explain how to handle data responsibly, and prepare employees for phishing and social engineering attacks.

Over time, employees may grow more lax with cybersecurity. That’s natural — but it’s also dangerous. To counteract this tendency, implement regular refresher courses that help employees retain their cybersecurity vigilance. These refresher courses also offer an opportunity to explain new policies, solutions, or threat vectors employees should know about.

Encrypt sensitive data

Encryption is a fundamental piece of any data security strategy. When you encrypt your data, you make it substantially more difficult for a threat actor to misuse it. Even if an employee accidentally shares encrypted data, that can stay secure and anonymous even if it leaves your organization’s security ecosystem.

You should apply encryption wherever data is stored, used, or transferred. Software such as enterprise digital rights management (EDRM) can help by automatically identifying content that needs protection and applying encryption.

Set access controls

Many employees need sensitive information to do their jobs, but not everyone needs the same level of access. The less access employees have, the less likely they are to cause an accidental data loss — they can’t lose what they don’t have.

Wherever possible, limit employee access to the data they need to work effectively. You can start setting these limits according to where employees stand in your org chart, but fine-tuning them on an individual basis provides the most protection. You can even limit access at the file level to further safeguard sensitive data.

Employees should have unique usernames and passwords as a baseline. To strengthen those protections, implement authentication methods such as single sign-on (SSO) or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Secure your endpoints

Any remote device communicating with your organization’s network represents a potential vulnerability. That includes computers and tablets your organization provides, of course. Yet, as employees increasingly use personal smartphones to conduct business, your security policies must expand to cover those endpoints, too. For example, a mobile phone forgotten at a coffee shop could fall into a threat actor’s hands and lead to an accidental data leakage.

Your organization should maintain a list of approved endpoints to monitor how each one is used. Only personal devices cleared and monitored by IT should be allowed to connect with your network. IT can then ensure each device uses safeguards such as robust passwords and quick-acting lock screens to keep data safe.

Manage shadow IT

The rise of SaaS applications and other cloud-based services has made it hard for IT departments to monitor all the apps employees use. When workers upload sensitive data to these platforms, they take it out of IT’s sight and influence. As a result, employees don’t have their usual protections against accidental data shares. Preventing those accidents requires addressing this and other forms of shadow IT.

Using a cloud access security broker (CASB) is one of the most effective ways to bring shadow IT in line. With a CASB, your IT team can gain visibility into any unapproved apps employees are using. It can also apply your DLP policies to those apps, extending IT’s reach. Finally, to bring shadow IT fully into the light, a CASB can empower your IT team to assess the risk level and compliance of cloud apps. If any fail to meet your standards, IT can restrict them.

Incorporate data loss protection tools

DLP has several components, but the most important for preventing accidental data shares is data leakage prevention. IT can use DLP to monitor infrastructure and devices in real time. The tool itself can supplement manual monitoring with AI processes. If your DLP spots potentially risky behavior, it can react before a leakage occurs: logging out a user, quarantining a file, or taking another protective action. 

The Lookout Cloud Security Platform takes those capabilities to the next level. Our DLP can classify data regardless of the format you use to store it. Rather than enforce blanket policies, it can account for context before enacting remediation. As a security service edge (SSE) solution, it can also empower you to monitor that data across all your environments, including SaaS apps, web apps, and cloud repositories. That helps you prevent accidental data shares before they can put your organization at risk. To learn more about our DLP solution, check out our data loss prevention page. 

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