targets, and the increasing use of cloudbased file-sharing services by enterprises to increase efficiency and reduce costs are also heightening the potential for data to be stolen or compromised. Preventing data lossIn this landscape, it’s not surprising that more enterprises are renewing their focus on Data Loss Prevention (DLP) efforts. Today, businesses are evaluating their DLP programmes to determinetwo things – if they are protecting the right data and if they are doing the right things to keep that data safe. When categorising data that must be secured, a good starting place for many organisations is to determine what data types require protection and security, based on applicable laws and regulations(which can vary by industry and geographic location). You can’t build rings of security around what you need to protect if you don’t know what those things are. This is a major shift in thinking for many organisations that focus their security controls on the systems and network, not the granularity of the actual data residing on the various systems, across multiple systems, or the network.Enterprise IT departments should be cautious not to miss obvious opportunities to prevent data from walking out the front door. For example, if an enterprise protects its sensitive files, such as Excel sheets containing customer data, with controls to prevent downloading or moving the data from centralised applications or databases, the