Data Theft means theft of different forms of electronic data stored in a corporate network in various forms, formats and location. Data can be stolen either by an outsider if he/she gets access to your data sources or by the employees of the firm themselves.

DLP stands for Data Leakage Prevention. Data Leakage prevention saves your data from getting stolen. DLP solutions usually are softwares or softwares embedded into hardwares.

Data theft occurs when an outsider/insider gets access to your data and uses it for malicious purposes either by copying it through some form (using Flash drive, CD/DVD etc) or transfering (through ftp, mail, IM etc) it to some different location.

Insider threat is more dangerous because:-

• Statistics says 2/3rd of data thefts are reasons of disgruntled employees
• Insiders have access to corporate data more easily
• Data Theft by insiders can occur even if you are fully secure and patched

Data Theft in your network can occur because of any of the following reasons:-

• Some of your employee(s) steals data for personal gain
• Some of your employee(s) steals data for fun
• Some of your employee(s) steals data out of curiosity
• Some outsider get access to some system and steals the data for peronal motives
• Someone exposes the data unknowingly which falls prey to wrong hands

Data Theft can be prevented by finding out how much of data is currently exposed in a corporate network through different data sources and contiuosly monitoring data usage so as to prevent if some confidential data is going outside.

A good Data Leakage prevention technology will help you in:-

• IPR Protection
• Data Risk Assessment
• Data Usage Surveillance
• Compliance and Regulations Assurance
• Protection of sensitive information
• Protection of Brand and Reputation

Cost of Data Theft depends on what kind of data theft are you victim of and what is the scale of the data theft. Typically a data theft can cost you from few IPR losses to your competitor to bankruptcy.

Few Facts

• An average cost of data breach is $4.8 million;
• Estimates of intellectual property lost by US companies per year are $250 billion;
• Global losses are to the tune of $512 billion with the US accounting for 50 per cent of the theft.
• According to a Gartner study, the data leakage segment currently around $150 million is growing at 70 per cent CAGR and
• would touch $1 billion by 2009-10.