Creating and implementing a data loss prevention policy is a critical security measure for organizations today. But many DLP policies prioritize security at the cost of usability, which leads to employee frustration and, in turn, security workarounds–ultimately increasing the risk of data leaks and shadow IT.
Achieving this balance is challenging, as implementing DLP policies comes with significant hurdles, including deployment complexity, integration with existing IT infrastructure, and ensuring scalability. In order to create a data loss prevention policy that is truly effective, IT leaders must find a way to not only overcome these challenges, but to also balance security and ease of use.
In this blog post, we’ll break down what a data loss prevention policy is, why organizations need one, and how to develop and implement a data loss prevention security policy that not only maintains compliance and data security, but also prioritizes usability by enabling all of these protections on BYOD and unmanaged laptops.
What Is a Data Loss Prevention Policy?
A data loss prevention policy is a combination of processes and technology that are put in place to stop the exfiltration and unintentional leak of intellectual property and data. Effective DLP policies must consider a company’s unique risk landscape, industry regulations, device policies, and workforce structure in order to ensure a comprehensive and practical plan.
DLP policies are especially crucial in today’s high-stakes cybersecurity environment, where malware, ransomware, insider threats, accidental exposure, and phishing attacks are constant risks. Security measures are even more critical for companies enabling workers to use BYOD and unmanaged laptops for work.
Why Do You Need a Data Loss Prevention Policy?
You may be wondering: Does my company really need a data loss prevention policy? The short answer is yes.
Companies today generate and store more data than ever before, making DLP policies essential for protecting sensitive information from evolving cyber threats. This is even more true for companies enabling workers to use unmanaged/personal laptops for work.
Let’s unpack the specific reasons why companies today require an effective data loss prevention policy.
Managing Risk
First comes managing risk. In 2024, the global average cost of a data breach was $4.88 million, a 10% increase from 2023 and a record high, according to a recent report.
It’s important to note that unmanaged devices have become prime targets for cybercriminals, with between 80-90% of ransomware attacks in 2024 occurring on unmanaged devices, according to Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report. But allowing contractors and remote workers to use personal laptops for work offers a myriad of benefits. In order to manage the risk that comes with enabling BYOD, companies must implement a fortified data loss prevention policy.
Maintaining Compliance
Next up is maintaining compliance. Many regulated industries, like healthcare, finance, and legal, have certain regulations they must follow in order to maintain compliance (i.e., HIPAA, FINRA, GDPR, SOC 2, SEC, etc.).
Failing to maintain compliance can lead to expensive fines – something businesses would certainly prefer to avoid. By having proper DLP policies in place, organizations can secure sensitive information, ensure transparency in their data handling processes, and control access, more easily maintaining compliance and avoiding such fines.
Protecting Corporate Assets
Protecting corporate assets is another crucial benefit companies gain from implementing a DLP policy. In this context, corporate assets can be financial records, research, customer data, and other sensitive information.
Especially when allowing personal laptops to be used for work purposes, protecting corporate assets with a DLP policy is a must. Technology like Secure Enclave technology goes a long way when securing company data and assets on unmanaged laptops with a DLP policy.
Building Customer Trust
Last but certainly not least: customer trust.
Nowadays, customers will not even entertain buying a product, service, or solution if they don’t know with certainty that their personal information and privacy will be protected. Data loss prevention policies go a long way in safeguarding customer trust by preventing malicious actors from compromising their data security.
How to Implement a BYOD-Friendly DLP Policy
Now that we’ve covered why companies need an effective data loss prevention policy, let’s explore how organizations enabling BYOD can develop a policy that secures data on personal and unmanaged laptops without disrupting productivity.
1. Identify and Classify Sensitive Data
The first step to implementing a BYOD-friendly DLP policy is identifying and classifying sensitive data. Determining which data is most appealing for bad actors, or which information would cause the greatest damage if exposed, helps organizations apply the right level of protection. Such data may include financial information, customer records, EHRs (electronic health records), etc.
To do this effectively, companies should categorize data based on regulatory requirements, sensitivity of the data, and business impact. For example, highly sensitive information like credit card details or health records should be tagged and protected with strict access controls. Companies also have to track how data moves across devices and networks to ensure compliance with various regulations. By classifying and labeling data, organizations can create and enforce policies that safeguard critical information without slowing down productivity.
2. Analyze Data Movement
Next up is ensuring that data movement is tracked and analyzed. Why? Analyzing data movement helps companies define effective security protocols.
Most companies have data at rest, data in use, and data in transit at all times – and all of it must be protected in order to avoid cyber attacks. By recognizing where data is and how it moves across your organization, you can establish monitoring mechanisms and controls to safeguard it, regardless of its location.
A secure enclave is an excellent way to secure data at rest, in use, and in transit. By encrypting all applications and data within an unwritable virtual drive with restricted access, organizations can ensure that sensitive data is protected on unmanaged and personal laptops.
3. Be Specific
When creating a BYOD-friendly data loss prevention security policy, being specific is key. Here are some real-world examples of how to implement DLP policies that balance flexibility with security:
1. Restrict Copy-Pasting of Sensitive Data
- Policy: block the copy and paste abilities of customer or financial data from work applications to personal applications
- How it works: If an employee tries to copy a customer’s credit card information from a CRM into a personal email, the DLP system detects it and prevents the action
- Customization: Allow exceptions for authorized roles, like finance teams handling refunds, but require encryption for external transfers
- Secure Work Communication on Personal Devices
- Policy: Ensure work emails with sensitive data are encrypted before being sent from a BYOD laptop or phone
- How it works: If an employee attempts to send an email containing customer PII from their personal Gmail account, the system flags it and either applies encryption or blocks the email
- Customization: Employees using company-managed email apps can send encrypted messages without friction, but personal email use for work data is restricted
4. Educate Employees
A successful DLP policy can’t overlook the importance of employee awareness. Even the most sophisticated data loss prevention measures can be undermined if employees don’t know how to recognize and avoid malware links or cyberattack emails.
In order to significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and ensure compliance, companies must foster a culture of security awareness. Developing a training program on data security best practices, potential threats, and company policies is a great way to reinforce the importance of data security and make sure that workers are well-equipped to handle potential threats.
5. Review and Refine
Lastly, an effective DLP policy that works for BYOD must undergo regular review, especially since regulations, technology, and business processes are almost always evolving. Part of this means collecting employee feedback on how/if their productivity is impacted.
By gathering analytics and insights on your DLP policy and how it impacts both data security and employee productivity, you can make adjustments and refinements as needed.
Choosing the Right Tech for Data Loss Prevention
Data loss prevention requires companies to consider many different factors and moving pieces, which is why choosing the right tech solution can go a long way in ensuring it happens.
A Secure Enclave is a separate, protected execution environment on a device. Within a secure enclave, data and applications are encrypted and completely isolated from the rest of the device, maintaining end-user privacy while reducing the attack surface.
Here is how a secure enclave helps companies implement an effective data loss prevention policy on unmanaged, personal, and BYOD laptops:
Protect Work Data Without Limiting Personal Use
Historically, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has been used to protect company data on unmanaged laptops. However, VDI is costly, comes with frustrating latency, and is complex for IT teams to upkeep.
Secure Enclave technology is superior to VDI for securing data on BYOD laptops, as it gives workers privacy and full control over their personal devices, and since it runs everything locally on the endpoint machine, users don’t have to worry about latency. It is also 40% less expensive than VDI, on average.
Create a Separate Secure Workspace
A secure enclave creates a dedicated, secure workspace on a computer, without requiring IT teams to control the entire device. Work applications are launched from and run locally within the enclave, where all data is encrypted and corporate policies are actively enforced. Workers can’t transfer information from the Secure Enclave onto the personal part of their machine, and employers can’t ‘see’ anything on the machine outside of the Secure Enclave.
In this way, a secure enclave extends corporate firewall protection to business activity only, ensuring company data security on unmanaged, personal, and BYOD laptops.
Venn’s Blue Border is an example of a solution that leverages secure enclave technology. To make the separation between work and personal activity clear, Venn wraps a blue border around work windows, giving users a simple visual cue for what’s work-related and what’s completely private.
Simplify Onboarding and Offboarding
An additional benefit of using a secure enclave to implement DLP policies is the simplified onboarding and offboarding experience.
To deploy a secure enclave to a new user, IT teams/administrators can simply send an email to a new user with setup instructions, enabling them to complete the onboarding themselves. This removes onboarding burdens from IT teams, whose plates are often full with a myriad of other responsibilities. And the beauty of a secure enclave is that offboarding is as much of a breeze as onboarding.
With remote wipe capabilities, IT teams can remotely disable the enclave in mere moments, minimizing the risk of data leakage on unauthorized workers’ computers once they have left a company. Compared to the task of tracking down company-managed laptops, secure enclave technology changes the game for onboarding and offboarding, especially for companies with a lot of remote/offshore workers and contractors or any seasonality where they have high fluctuation of workers.
Ensure Compliance
Secure enclave technology is great for enforcing DLP policies and it can play a key role in helping companies meet regulatory requirements.
Take this leading healthcare company, for example. With 2,000 remote employees and plans to onboard hundreds of independent contractors, its existing IT approach was becoming unsustainable. At the time, the company’s IT team was shipping pre-configured laptops to every employee and contractor at a cost of $1,500 per person. Recovering the devices when workers left the company was a logistical nightmare and a large percentage of the hardware was lost or discarded.
This company started considering BYOD to eliminate hardware distribution headaches and cut costs, but they weren’t sure how to protect their data and maintain compliance without managing the entire device or using latency-ridden, costly VDI. That was when they found Venn’s Blue Border, which utilizes secure enclave technology to protect sensitive data on unmanaged laptops.
With Venn, the company now onboards contractors faster, spends less on IT operations, and maintains uninterrupted customer service — all while meeting healthcare compliance standards.
Venn: The Best Foundation for Your DLP Policy
Secure Enclave technology is an excellent way to implement an effective data loss prevention policy. By creating a secure, isolated workspace on unmanaged and BYOD laptops, secure enclaves:
- Simplify IT oversight and administration
- Ensure compliance with a range of regulatory standards
- Guarantee end-user privacy
- Eliminate data security risks associated with BYOD
- Streamline onboarding and offboarding
Venn’s Blue Border utilizes secure enclave technology to secure company data on unmanaged and BYOD laptops, without compromising productivity or end-user privacy, providing a simple, cost-effective solution for companies implementing successful DLP policies.
If you want to see Venn in action, book a demo here.
