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Essential Data Loss Prevention Best Practices

Bineesh Mathew | March 16, 2022 | 291 views

Data Loss Prevention
Data exchanges happen between organizations and their partners, customers, distant employees, other legitimate users, and occasionally unauthorized individuals. Keeping track of all the information is difficult for many firms that lack adequate data loss prevention best practices. One cause is that employees transfer data across many communication routes, both permitted and illicit. They communicate using email, instant messaging, shared online folders, collaborative software, texting, social media, and other platforms. Employees also store data in various locations, such as desktops, laptops, notebooks, smartphones, file servers, legacy databases, the cloud, and other devices, as well as in the cloud.

A lack of awareness about what information goes out of the company makes data loss prevention more difficult. However, using data loss protection best practices can prevent the misuse of personal information.

The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million in the United States. However, the price may be higher for large corporations. Home Depot, for example, spent more than $260 million in 2014 after hackers stole credit card information from more than 50 million consumers. As a result, Home Depot had to pay back banks, credit card companies, and customers and make court-ordered security changes.

Common Challenges of Businesses Not Having DLP Strategies

When weighing the advantages of a well-implemented DLP approach, you must equally examine the hazards of the alternative. For example, data breaches are costly to a company's bottom line. According to PurpleSec, $3.86 million is the average cost of a data breach to firms worldwide. Of course, this impact includes quantifiable cash losses, but it also consists of the irreparable harm to its reputation if a successful breach occurs. A solid data loss prevention strategy can help you escape the consequences of a disaster like this.

Essential DLP Strategies

Regardless of the size or industry, every organization requires a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy to prevent data loss. Medical records, financial data, and intellectual property are examples of important, sensitive, or regulated data that should be protected. In most cases, DLP entails both technologies and policy. Personal USB devices, for example, can't be used on workstations. This is a common practice, just like having clear rules for emailing confidential information.

Read on to learn some of the essential data loss prevention best practices.

Define the Roles and Responsibilities of Everyone

First and foremost, make sure everyone in the organization involved in data loss prevention understands their roles and responsibilities.

"DLP strategies encompass several things. Some of the best practices include identifying those in the organization hierarchy and their obligations or tasks under the DLP standards. You must determine who creates the policy, who revises it, and who puts it into action."

Baruch Labunski, CEO of Rank Secure

This distinction will help you keep a close grip on who has access to your data. Using the principle of least privilege, where individual users have access only to the information they need to accomplish their work—nothing more and nothing less—is one of the best methods to avoid a data breach. In addition, it will be easier to determine how much data is in danger if a user's account is hacked or otherwise compromised.

In the worst-case situation, clear user roles keep things going smoothly. It's customary to allocate roles to individuals in other types of emergencies, such as fires or floods, so that everyone understands what to do and can respond quickly. The breach of data is no exception. By defining their roles and responsibilities, you can avoid situations where misunderstandings lead to confusion and, eventually, inaction.

Get Rid of Unnecessary Data

The rising importance of artificial intelligence and automation could lead you to believe that all data is good and that having more information is always better. However, data is only helpful if it has a clear purpose. Excessive data can slow down production and efficiency and put a lot of data at risk.

As a result, it's critical to remove any data that doesn't serve any purpose. If unwanted data is collected and stored, it is more likely to cause harm than good. It not only clogs up your data landscape but also draws attention away from the most critical information and increases the risk of data loss.

Eliminate unwanted data to reduce your risk. So, a key DLP strategy is to get rid of any data that doesn't make a big difference in the growth of the company.

Have a Data Classification Framework

It's also critical to segregate your data precisely. As businesses become more data-driven, specific data will inevitably be more sensitive and valuable than others. There are many ways to make your risk management processes more effective by separating sensitive information from non-sensitive information.

It's worth mentioning that this should include all data that has anything to do with your company. Pay close attention to the information you share with your vendors, partners, and other third-party platforms, as well as the information you receive from them. This is because all the data flowing in and out of your systems is at risk of being lost. A bird's-eye perspective is necessary to ensure you don't miss any blind spots. All the data you find should be sorted according to its relative importance after you've scanned each of them.

Regularly Update Policies and Procedures

When developing a DLP strategy, one of the most crucial best practices to remember is that there will never be a moment when you can dust your hands off and consider the job done. The responsibility to keep it safe is an ongoing process that will continue as long as valuable information exists.

Similarly, the implementation of your DLP strategy should correspond to and represent each stage of your company's growth. Your data loss protection plan should be updated as your company keeps growing and expanding. The rules and processes that are in place now may not be able to meet your company's future demands and requirements.

Educate Your Employees

DLP best practices rely heavily on employee understanding and acceptance of security policies and procedures. Employees’ data security understanding and their ability to follow recommended DLP best practices can be improved by education and training activities like classes, online training, monthly emails, and posters. Penalties for data security breaches may also enhance compliance, mainly if they are well-defined.

Summing Up

Data loss prevention (DLP) and auditing tools should be used to ensure that data usage restrictions are consistently enforced. The purpose is to determine how data is being utilized, where it is going, and whether or not it complies with compliance policies such as GDPR. Administrators should receive real-time notifications to investigate when a suspicious activity is noticed. In addition, violators should be held accountable for the data security policy's implications.

Frequently Asked Questions


Which is the best data loss prevention strategy?

Backing up all your data is the most crucial preventative best practice against data loss. Keep a backup of your information on a different server.

How can network data loss be prevented?

The best way is to prevent sensitive data from being lost over the network. Look for sensitive information in email subjects, messages, and attachments. Enforce policy-based web application monitoring and blocking. To ensure secure communication and regulatory compliance, encrypt email information.

What are the ways to protect data storage?

Some of the ways to protect data storage are:

  • Encrypt your data
  • Backup your data
  • Anti-malware protection is a must

Spotlight

Smoothwall

Smoothwall develop intelligent web filtering and security solutions designed to protect users worldwide. Our products ensure safety and productivity — without forcing you to compromise on flexibility. We protect millions of users in thousands of networks worldwide. SWG and UTM from Smoothwall combine our world-first 'Content Aware' web filtering with anti-malware, deep packet inspection, anonymous proxy detection and more. With support for any mobile device your users might bring to your network — or take outside of it — we provide the most flexible, safe Web experience for your users and your organisation. Visit www.smoothwall.com today for your evaluation. Smoothwall — The Web You Want.

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Most are looking to improve their work-life balance and reduce some of the stressors of the job. While many CISOs are also concerned about trends in liability and becoming headline news for decisions made on the job, requiring CISOs to appear in executive sessions with board members or state governors can help to alleviate these concerns and improve CISO job satisfaction while at the same time improving how the most senior levels of organizations fulfil their responsibilities for oversight of top risks.

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The Board of Directors (possibly including named corporate officers) in most cases are protected by being diligent about the Business Judgement Rule (BJR). Heavily adopted in Delaware case law and since adopted in various forms in many states, this “rule” stipulates that proper oversight includes demonstrating the duty of loyalty (no conflicting interests) and duty of care (make informed decisions) to be protected from liability. There are few cases (although Enron being one) where liability was found but it was for illegalities and poor business judgment. Since CISOs are not named corporate officers in most cases, BJR does not provide comfort. Similarly, liability insurance which covers legal defense fees and cash judgments often covers only directors and named corporate officers unless the CISO has been specifically included in the policy. 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Most are looking to improve their work-life balance and reduce some of the stressors of the job. While many CISOs are also concerned about trends in liability and becoming headline news for decisions made on the job, requiring CISOs to appear in executive sessions with board members or state governors can help to alleviate these concerns and improve CISO job satisfaction while at the same time improving how the most senior levels of organizations fulfil their responsibilities for oversight of top risks.

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With the acceleration of software development and the greater-than-ever role of code in current business infrastructure, application security is shifting left in the process and infusing every step to ensure that the applications reaching customers' hands are secure and reliable. Top 5 Trends for Businesses to Improve Their Existing Application Security Applications serve as a doorway to servers and networks, making them an excellent target for malicious actors. Since cyber attackers constantly improve their techniques for breaking into software, it is becoming essential for businesses to gain insights into ever-evolving trends in the AppSec space. Here are some of the prominent trends that businesses should aware of to improve their existing application security. Trend 1: AppSec and CloudSec Convergence To accurately estimate attack surface and overall security posture, both application code vulnerabilities and cloud service hosting misconfigurations must be examined. The convergence of AppSec and CloudSec is becoming a critical component of modern security operations. It allows organizations to gain a comprehensive view of the attack surface and better understand the risks posed by application code and cloud service providers. By looking at these two areas cohesively, organizations can identify business-critical vulnerabilities and prioritize their remediation efforts. Trend 2: Adoption of Automated AI Security Capabilities The increasing volume and complexity of security threats pose significant challenges for organizations, causing strain on their threat detection and response capabilities. This leads to slower response times, higher costs, and a greater impact on security incidents. To address this issue, many companies are turning to security automation as a potential solution. One of such approaches involves the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which can automate data gathering, threat identification, and incident response processes. By adopting security automation, companies can optimize the use of limited security personnel and resources, enabling them to focus on high-value activities that provide maximum benefit to the organization. Trend 3: Emphasis on Securing the Software Supply Chain The software supply chain is emerging as a primary area of focus due to the heightened risks associated with software development. This urgency has been further compounded by the recent attack, such as Solarwind data breach and the Log4j attack on Apache, increasing the significance of software security measures. Companies are taking a more proactive approach for making enhancements in the software supply chain to protect their applications, including conducting Static Application Security Testing (SAST) to identify and address vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them. Trend 4: Extreme 'Shift Left' The ‘shift left’ in software development has gained significant momentum in recent years. The idea behind this approach is to prioritize security and other critical aspects of software development at the earliest possible stage in the development process. By doing so, organizations can make more informed security decisions and identify and address security vulnerabilities before they cause any damage. As the pace of development continues to increase, organizations are increasingly adopting this approach in their software development processes to protect their systems and data from security risks. Trend 5: Upsurge in Demand for Vulnerability Prioritization Managing vulnerabilities in a software system requires analyzing vast amounts of data to determine issues that require immediate attention and prioritization. However, the growing presence of false positives is negatively impacting this process, resulting in decreased efficiency and wasted resources. Organizations are increasingly looking for vendors to provide vulnerability management tools that can reduce false positives, differentiate between low-priority issues and severe security threats, and offer actionable insights to mitigate them. Moving Forward with Application Security Applications security has become more critical than ever before for businesses in the current digital scape. With the attack surface constantly expanding and the frequency of threats on the rise, organizations must remain agile and employ the best effective strategies to protect their applications from potential cyberattacks. The significance of application security has not gone unnoticed. As organizations continue to invest in security measures, they are increasingly upgrading themselves as per emerging security trends to protect themselves against evolving cyber threats. This includes adopting the ‘shift left’ approach, tightening controls, and having a clear definition of remediation processes.

Read More
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Read More

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During 2019, new privacy laws were introduced, and many current laws evolved in the United States and across the global landscape. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in full effect, we saw expensive fines levied upon companies that fell victim to data privacy breaches. As we move into a new year, probably the biggest takeaway from 2019 is that being proactive and having a data privacy strategy in place is important to help mitigate the risk of a data privacy breach. The regulatory landscape continues to evolve as states and countries actively pass new expanded requirements for privacy and cybersecurity regulations. While laws in the U.S., like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), are getting significant attention, many other states and countries are actively amending their breach notification laws to include tighter restrictions.

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Lookout Announces the Successful Divestiture of Its Consumer Mobile Security Business Segment

Businesswire | June 05, 2023

Lookout, Inc., the endpoint-to-cloud security company, today announced it has closed the previously announced sale of its consumer mobile security business to F-Secure, a global provider of consumer security products and services. With this strategic divestiture Lookout will focus on expanding its core enterprise business, built around the Lookout Cloud Security Platform. The sale of Lookout’s consumer mobile security business represents a deliberate and strategic decision to optimize its enterprise product portfolio and concentrate its product innovation and go-to-market on the expansion of these core competencies. The divestiture sets Lookout up for long-term growth and further positions the Company to address the security transformation impacting organizations today, including the increase in remote work, the shift to cloud-based delivery models and the transition to zero trust architectures. “We are pleased to announce the successful divestiture of our mobile consumer security business, which represents a significant milestone in our strategic transformation to become a pure-play enterprise cybersecurity company,” Jim Dolce, CEO at Lookout. “With this refined focus, we will continue to drive innovation, invest in the development of cutting-edge solutions and drive greater value for our customers.” Lookout’s core enterprise business includes Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security and its security services edge (SSE) cloud-native solution, the Lookout Cloud Security Platform. The Company entered the cloud security market through its acquisition of CipherCloud in March 2021. Its Cloud Security Platform was recently scored among the highest three vendors in the 2023 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Security Service Edge (SSE)1 report in each of the four use cases. The Gartner Critical Capabilities for SSE – an essential companion to the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for SSE2 in which Lookout was named a Visionary for the second year in a row – is a comparative analysis that scores products or services against a set of critical differentiators that every business needs, as identified by Gartner. These four use cases include Secure Web and Cloud Usage, Detect and Mitigate Threats, Connect and Secure Remote Workers and Identify and Protect Sensitive Information. As part of the sale agreement, F-Secure acquires all of the Lookout consumer mobile security products and technology and assumes all responsibility for ongoing operations and customer relationships. Additionally, the Company’s consumer employees will become part of F-Secure. About Lookout Lookout, Inc. is the endpoint-to-cloud cybersecurity company that delivers zero trust security by reducing risk and protecting data wherever it goes, without boundaries or limits. Our unified, cloud-native platform safeguards digital information across devices, apps, networks and clouds and is as fluid and flexible as the modern digital world. Lookout is trusted by enterprises and government agencies of all sizes to protect the sensitive data they care about most, enabling them to work and connect freely and safely. To learn more about the Lookout Cloud Security Platform, visit www.lookout.com and follow Lookout on our blog, LinkedIn and Twitter. © 2023 Lookout, Inc. LOOKOUT®, the Lookout Shield Design®, LOOKOUT with Shield Design®, and SIGNAL FLARE® are registered trademarks of Lookout, Inc. in the United States and other countries. DAY OF SHECURITY®, LOOKOUT MOBILE SECURITY®, and POWERED BY LOOKOUT® are registered trademarks of Lookout, Inc. in the United States. Lookout, Inc. maintains common law trademark rights in EVERYTHING IS OK, PROTECTED BY LOOKOUT, CIPHERCLOUD, SCREAM, the 4 Bar Shield Design, and the Lookout multi-color/multi-shaded Wingspan design.

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DATA SECURITY, PLATFORM SECURITY, SOFTWARE SECURITY

New KnowBe4 SecurityCoach Integrates With Bitdefender GravityZone

PRWeb | May 22, 2023

KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced that its new SecurityCoach product integrates with Bitdefender GravityZone, a leading next-generation endpoint protection platform for threat prevention, detection and response. The new partnership and product integration between the two cybersecurity leaders will help reduce risky behavior, support real-time security coaching and help organizations become more cyber resilient. SecurityCoach helps IT/security professionals develop a strong security culture by enabling real-time security coaching of their users in response to risky security behavior. Leveraging an organization’s existing security stack, IT/security professionals can configure their real-time coaching campaigns to immediately deliver a SecurityTip to their users related to a detected event. “Bitdefender joins our ecosystem of technology partners, which is growing rapidly, to enrich the support we provide to our customers and fortify their organization’s human firewall,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “KnowBe4 is proud to partner with Bitdefender to provide a seamless integration with our new SecurityCoach product, which aims to deliver real-time security coaching and advice to help end users enhance their cybersecurity knowledge and strengthen their role in contributing to a strong security culture. KnowBe4 is actively working with Bitdefender to provide an API-based integration to connect our platform with systems that IT/security professionals already utilize, making rolling out new products to their teams an easy and unified process.” “We are pleased to partner with KnowBe4 to integrate Bitdefender GravityZone with SecurityCoach,” said Daniel Daraban, senior director of product management at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. “Businesses and organizations are under constant assault from ransomware, trojans, and other malware infecting systems. This integration leverages GravityZone’s behavioral analytics, machine learning, and root cause analysis for contextualized alerts resulting in actionable SecurityTips that help minimize risky user behavior.” KnowBe4 will provide step-by-step instructions and recommendations to help IT/security professionals achieve quick and pain-free integration and data syncing during the implementation process. KnowBe4 now integrates or partners with over 20 of the world's top cybersecurity platforms across Endpoint, Network, Identity, Cloud and Data Security https://www.knowbe4.com/integrations. For more information on SecurityCoach, visit http://www.knowbe4.com/securitycoach. About Bitdefender Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide. Guardian over millions of consumer, enterprise, and government environments, Bitdefender is one of the industry’s most trusted experts for eliminating threats, protecting privacy, digital identity and data, and enabling cyber resilience. With deep investments in research and development, Bitdefender Labs discovers hundreds of new threats each minute and validates billions of threat queries daily. The company has pioneered breakthrough innovations in antimalware, IoT security, behavioral analytics, and artificial intelligence and its technology is licensed by more than 180 of the world’s most recognized technology brands. Founded in 2001, Bitdefender has customers in 170+ countries with offices around the world. For more information, visit https://www.bitdefender.com. About KnowBe4 KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 56,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.

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PLATFORM SECURITY, SOFTWARE SECURITY, CLOUD SECURITY

Uptycs Integrates with Amazon Security Lake to Enable the Correlation of its CNAPP and XDR Security Telemetry with a Vast Ecosystem of Security Tools

Prnewswire | June 01, 2023

Uptycs, provider of the first unified CNAPP and XDR platform, today announced an integration with Amazon Security Lake from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Security Lake automatically centralizes security data from across AWS environments, leading SaaS providers, on-premises, and cloud sources into a purpose-built data lake. Amazon Security Lake manages data throughout its lifecycle with customizable data retention settings and converts and conforms incoming security data to the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) open standard, making it easier to automatically collect, combine, and analyze security data from AWS, security partners, and analytics providers. The integration with Uptycs helps organizations speed up threat detection and incident response by correlating Uptycs telemetry and events with data from a vast number of other security tools. With the proliferation of technologies and environments, security teams need to spend time setting up one-to-one integrations between their tools to correlate threat activity. This is expensive and delays response to security threats. In contrast, a shift up approach to cybersecurity does not need complex integrations and intermediary systems to connect the dots. The premise involves getting the data in a standardized format right out of the gate, and streaming it up into a data lake so security teams can do cross-correlations that speed up threat detection and response. The OCSF project offers a consistent approach towards cybersecurity telemetry by providing a standard schema for common security events, defining versioning criteria to facilitate schema evolution, and including a self-governance process for security log producers and consumers. This enables organizations to easily bring together data from multiple security tools. "We are excited to bring the security telemetry from Uptycs into Amazon Security Lake," says Ganesh Pai, CEO and co-founder of Uptycs. "A key tenet of the shift up approach to cybersecurity is to stream normalized security telemetry into a data lake, moving security analytics processing power to the cloud. Uptycs and AWS customers can now enjoy enhanced protection and faster reaction time as they benefit from standardized OCSF-based telemetry across their on-prem and cloud workloads." Using the OCSF format, Uptycs and Amazon Security Lake allow organizations to have a consistent telemetry, enabling them to easily correlate data from a variety of security, SIEM, and SOAR tools. Uptycs, an AWS Security Competency Partner, will send a wealth of OCSF-formatted data from on-premises and cloud assets to Amazon Security Lake, including behavioral threat detections from endpoints and cloud workloads, anomaly detections, policy violations, risky policies, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities. Uptycs prospects and customers can get started with the Amazon Security Lake integration by contacting Uptycs. About Uptycs Your developer's laptop is just a hop away from cloud infrastructure. Attackers don't think in silos, so why would you have siloed solutions protecting public cloud, private cloud, containers, laptops, and servers? Uptycs reduces risk by prioritizing your responses to threats, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, sensitive data exposure, and compliance mandates across your modern attack surface—all from a single platform, UI, and data model. This includes the ability to tie together threat activity as it traverses on-prem and cloud boundaries, thus delivering a more cohesive enterprise-wide security posture.

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ENTERPRISE IDENTITY, SOFTWARE SECURITY, CLOUD SECURITY

Lookout Announces the Successful Divestiture of Its Consumer Mobile Security Business Segment

Businesswire | June 05, 2023

Lookout, Inc., the endpoint-to-cloud security company, today announced it has closed the previously announced sale of its consumer mobile security business to F-Secure, a global provider of consumer security products and services. With this strategic divestiture Lookout will focus on expanding its core enterprise business, built around the Lookout Cloud Security Platform. The sale of Lookout’s consumer mobile security business represents a deliberate and strategic decision to optimize its enterprise product portfolio and concentrate its product innovation and go-to-market on the expansion of these core competencies. The divestiture sets Lookout up for long-term growth and further positions the Company to address the security transformation impacting organizations today, including the increase in remote work, the shift to cloud-based delivery models and the transition to zero trust architectures. “We are pleased to announce the successful divestiture of our mobile consumer security business, which represents a significant milestone in our strategic transformation to become a pure-play enterprise cybersecurity company,” Jim Dolce, CEO at Lookout. “With this refined focus, we will continue to drive innovation, invest in the development of cutting-edge solutions and drive greater value for our customers.” Lookout’s core enterprise business includes Lookout Mobile Endpoint Security and its security services edge (SSE) cloud-native solution, the Lookout Cloud Security Platform. The Company entered the cloud security market through its acquisition of CipherCloud in March 2021. Its Cloud Security Platform was recently scored among the highest three vendors in the 2023 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Security Service Edge (SSE)1 report in each of the four use cases. The Gartner Critical Capabilities for SSE – an essential companion to the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for SSE2 in which Lookout was named a Visionary for the second year in a row – is a comparative analysis that scores products or services against a set of critical differentiators that every business needs, as identified by Gartner. These four use cases include Secure Web and Cloud Usage, Detect and Mitigate Threats, Connect and Secure Remote Workers and Identify and Protect Sensitive Information. As part of the sale agreement, F-Secure acquires all of the Lookout consumer mobile security products and technology and assumes all responsibility for ongoing operations and customer relationships. Additionally, the Company’s consumer employees will become part of F-Secure. About Lookout Lookout, Inc. is the endpoint-to-cloud cybersecurity company that delivers zero trust security by reducing risk and protecting data wherever it goes, without boundaries or limits. Our unified, cloud-native platform safeguards digital information across devices, apps, networks and clouds and is as fluid and flexible as the modern digital world. Lookout is trusted by enterprises and government agencies of all sizes to protect the sensitive data they care about most, enabling them to work and connect freely and safely. To learn more about the Lookout Cloud Security Platform, visit www.lookout.com and follow Lookout on our blog, LinkedIn and Twitter. © 2023 Lookout, Inc. LOOKOUT®, the Lookout Shield Design®, LOOKOUT with Shield Design®, and SIGNAL FLARE® are registered trademarks of Lookout, Inc. in the United States and other countries. DAY OF SHECURITY®, LOOKOUT MOBILE SECURITY®, and POWERED BY LOOKOUT® are registered trademarks of Lookout, Inc. in the United States. Lookout, Inc. maintains common law trademark rights in EVERYTHING IS OK, PROTECTED BY LOOKOUT, CIPHERCLOUD, SCREAM, the 4 Bar Shield Design, and the Lookout multi-color/multi-shaded Wingspan design.

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DATA SECURITY, PLATFORM SECURITY, SOFTWARE SECURITY

New KnowBe4 SecurityCoach Integrates With Bitdefender GravityZone

PRWeb | May 22, 2023

KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced that its new SecurityCoach product integrates with Bitdefender GravityZone, a leading next-generation endpoint protection platform for threat prevention, detection and response. The new partnership and product integration between the two cybersecurity leaders will help reduce risky behavior, support real-time security coaching and help organizations become more cyber resilient. SecurityCoach helps IT/security professionals develop a strong security culture by enabling real-time security coaching of their users in response to risky security behavior. Leveraging an organization’s existing security stack, IT/security professionals can configure their real-time coaching campaigns to immediately deliver a SecurityTip to their users related to a detected event. “Bitdefender joins our ecosystem of technology partners, which is growing rapidly, to enrich the support we provide to our customers and fortify their organization’s human firewall,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “KnowBe4 is proud to partner with Bitdefender to provide a seamless integration with our new SecurityCoach product, which aims to deliver real-time security coaching and advice to help end users enhance their cybersecurity knowledge and strengthen their role in contributing to a strong security culture. KnowBe4 is actively working with Bitdefender to provide an API-based integration to connect our platform with systems that IT/security professionals already utilize, making rolling out new products to their teams an easy and unified process.” “We are pleased to partner with KnowBe4 to integrate Bitdefender GravityZone with SecurityCoach,” said Daniel Daraban, senior director of product management at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. “Businesses and organizations are under constant assault from ransomware, trojans, and other malware infecting systems. This integration leverages GravityZone’s behavioral analytics, machine learning, and root cause analysis for contextualized alerts resulting in actionable SecurityTips that help minimize risky user behavior.” KnowBe4 will provide step-by-step instructions and recommendations to help IT/security professionals achieve quick and pain-free integration and data syncing during the implementation process. KnowBe4 now integrates or partners with over 20 of the world's top cybersecurity platforms across Endpoint, Network, Identity, Cloud and Data Security https://www.knowbe4.com/integrations. For more information on SecurityCoach, visit http://www.knowbe4.com/securitycoach. About Bitdefender Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide. Guardian over millions of consumer, enterprise, and government environments, Bitdefender is one of the industry’s most trusted experts for eliminating threats, protecting privacy, digital identity and data, and enabling cyber resilience. With deep investments in research and development, Bitdefender Labs discovers hundreds of new threats each minute and validates billions of threat queries daily. The company has pioneered breakthrough innovations in antimalware, IoT security, behavioral analytics, and artificial intelligence and its technology is licensed by more than 180 of the world’s most recognized technology brands. Founded in 2001, Bitdefender has customers in 170+ countries with offices around the world. For more information, visit https://www.bitdefender.com. About KnowBe4 KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 56,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.

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