Can You See Where Your Data Is Going?

Back in the 1990s — you know, when you had to use a phone line to get online — the internet was referred to as the “Information Superhighway.” It’s funny to think about now, considering how slow the connection was and how long it would take to send and receive even small packets of data.

It might have been simpler times, but it’s an instructive way to think about your network, which is your very own stretch of highway. But, much like a standard highway, enforcement of security and safety rules on your network is extremely difficult if you don’t have the right tools.

The fact is that your highway is supporting lots of “cars” in the form of data that you’ve collected over the years. This consists of information gathered directly from consumers/customers, cookies and trackers, brokers, as well as data your business has generated. And much of it has become essential to your business operations, ensuring that everything operates efficiently and effectively.

On top of all that data, you’ve built the infrastructure for it all to move quickly, reliably, and securely. You’ve already deployed a number of cloud-based applications across your network that can help set the rules of the road — dictating how your data is handled along the way and directing the traffic to its intended destination.

Here’s the catch, though: there are no streetlights on this highway. You can’t see your data flowing through your network.

That is in part because much of the data that these applications are interacting with is unclassified. (We’re not talking about classified in the government sense!) According to a study conducted by data management company Veritas Technologies, more than half of all data within an organization’s network is unclassified or untagged. Imagine setting up a license plate scanner on your highway but more than half the cars that pass by have no license plate to scan.

The issue here is one of visibility, and it’s a major one. According to Positive Technologies, more than 70% of IT professionals said they have average or low visibility when it comes to monitoring external traffic on their network — shockingly, nearly as many reported the same lack of visibility with internal traffic, and this doesn’t even include seeing the data that all that traffic is interacting with.

What your highway needs is streetlights that can automatically identify cars, even without license plates — ones that can see and make visible everything that is passing through, every bit of data that makes its way from applications to users.

What if you could simply plug in an ICAP server that instantly showed you where your data is coming from, who it’s going to, what type of data it is, and even enabled you to set policies to redact data “in flight” from users who don’t need to see it?

Nullafi Shield enables you to do exactly that. The solution sees all the information that is moving on your network. It sits on your network between users and applications and watches your data as it moves, giving you a bird’s eye view — as well as granular deep dives — on all the activity on your network. If it’s moving, Nullafi can see it.

Additionally, think of Nullafi as installing an E-ZPass toll on your information superhighway, because not only can it spot all the data moving across your network, but it can also enforce your security policies on the fly, redacting data before it reaches its destination so unnecessary information doesn’t end up getting handled by people who don’t need it.

That includes the data you haven’t classified, thanks to Nullafi’s ability to automatically detect and classify data, even untagged data, on the fly. That way, you don’t have any costly, time-consuming, and complex classification “pre-requisites” for using our technology — just plug it in, and you’re done.

Let’s say somewhere in the masses of data that you’ve collected and is speeding across your network are social security numbers. You don’t know where they are or why, exactly. Maybe they’re accidentally in a Notes field in your CRM from years ago. Maybe they’re in column 237 in a table in a report in your BI Tool that almost everyone has access to. The point is there's no way to know, much less control, data flowing across all apps and users every minute of every day.

What you do know is that you want that social security number to be redacted if, say, one of the users of your business intelligence tools were viewing reports, dashboards, or analytics that may display it. That data isn’t necessary for that user to do their job, so you’d rather not allow it to be seen.

No problem. Nullafi watches, classifies, and can redact the data as it’s being sent from an application to a user. This is extremely important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are that:

     1) We can protect any application with no configuration needed.

     2) The applications will work the same way they always do; they won't break because their functionality is not impaired by Nullafi interfering with anything it's trying to do.

     3) The end user doesn't need to log into any separate portal or URL.

Before the data ever arrives on the endpoint that it is being accessed on, Nullafi scans it, identifies it, and can redact it based on the rules you have established for this particular type of data, user, and application.

Want to instantly see the data moving across your network and see how Nullafi can help automatically protect even what you didn’t know was there? Request a demo today — you just might be surprised at what you find.

‍