What Is Data Exfiltration And How To Prevent It

Discover the prevention methods for data exfiltration

March 15, 2023

Data Exfiltration And How To Prevent It

Titaniam’s CEO, Arti Raman, shares three methods companies can use to prevent data exfiltration in the case of a system breach, as well as an explanation of what data exfiltration is.

In a world increasingly powered by data, protecting that data from bad actors has become one of the signal tasks of our time. After all, data is now often the most valuable, tangible asset that many companies have. Today it can be reasonably said that an organization is only as good as its data protection strategy.

Any company that derives value from data would be negligent and not proactively defend itself against these looming threats. Arming yourself with information, studying threat trends, and understanding the different angles of attack are key to developing a sustainable, long-term data protection plan.

On that note, it’s worth pointing out that—according to Titaniam’s State of Data Exfiltration and Extortion 2022Opens a new window —most cyberattacks now involve some form of data exfiltration. Over 70% of organizations admitted they’d suffered a ransomware attack in the report. Of that number, 68% included data exfiltration—while a staggering 60% were extorted and eventually forced to give in to ransom demands.

Therefore, companies charged with protecting data must develop a deeper understanding of data exfiltration—what it is and how they can prevent it.

What Is Data Exfiltration?

Fundamentally, data exfiltration is another way of saying data theft. The dreaded result of the breach process: an unauthorized user or attacker gets into your network and starts siphoning out your data as fast as possible without raising any alarms.

The motive here, more often than not, is profit. Data is about as effective a form of leverage as one could imagine. So many companies today deal with sensitive private information. Hackers can compel companies to pay tremendous sums of money by threatening to leak or otherwise misuse this information, tallying in the millions. Even individual customers are at risk in these kinds of threat scenarios. And tragically, these attacks are self-perpetuating, providing the raw data needed to extort companies and customers repeatedly.

How Do Hackers Exfiltrate Data?

A 2019 study from McAfeeOpens a new window grants us some valuable insight into the preferred methodologies of these bad actors. It revealed that database leaks accounted for 38% of extortion tactics, that network traffic constituted 37%, and that file shares and corporate emails were tied at 36% each.

With that in mind, let’s dig into these tactics one by one to gain a clearer understanding of how each works.

1. Database leaks and cloud services 

Most hackers are after the trove of information that powers your business gathered over months and years and is of central importance to your business’s continued operation. This is the prime target. All kinds of scenarios are possible here—for instance, a rogue actor with the capacity to requisition or alter virtual machines (VMs), install code, or make requests to cloud storage or computing services could potentially steal massive amounts of data.

2. Network traffic

This happens when unauthorized users slip into an inadequately-defended network and wreak havoc on the system, for instance, by introducing malware or ransomware. Without proper network visibility, attacks like these become ever-more-likely.

3. File shares

Increasingly, attackers are turning to file-sharing applications to breach systems and sow chaos, sharing Google Drive or Dropbox links in the hopes that unsuspecting employees will open them and allow them access to your network.

4. Corporate email

“Phishing” emails are commonly sent to employees within an organization in the hopes that those employees will fall for the bait, click a link and permit the infiltrator access to their system.

As you can see, there is no shortage of strategies by which hackers might attempt to access your organization’s private data. The only adequate response to this intense threat environment is constant, unyielding vigilance—in which preparation for the worst becomes an integral part of your company’s day-to-day routine.

See More: How Hackers Hack and the Tools They Use

Why Should Organizations Care About Data Exfiltration?

It is almost hard to say how much even a minor breach – let alone a significant one – can cost an organization. Once lost, customer trust can be almost impossible to regain – there’s a reason 60%Opens a new window of small businesses shutter within six months of a breach. That’s not to mention the tremendous financial costs or the time and resources companies must devote to curtail the attack and get operations back on track. And if data is lost and not retrieved, day-to-day operations may become difficult or impossible.

According to Titaniam’s State of Data Exfiltration and Extortion 2022Opens a new window , in most cases where data was exfiltrated as part of the ransomware attack (60%), attackers then proceeded to extort the victims. Or that a sizable majority of those extorted (59%) found that the stolen data gave attackers unbeatable leverage, forcing them to give in to the ransomware demands.

The stakes here are too high – the potential for damage too significant – for companies not to take a proactive stance against the threat of data exfiltration.

How Can Organizations Prevent Data Exfiltration?

So we’ve established that data exfiltration is a severe issue that can wreck entire established businesses overnight. Accordingly, the question now is: how can organizations stop this from happening?

1. Identify and stop the bad guys if and when they infiltrate your system

This is a problematic approach—after all, the bad guys are deeply skilled at looking and behaving like good guys so as not to raise any red flags. Even to highly trained analysts and cybersecurity pros, the traffic from data exfiltration might not immediately scan as trouble—it might just look to them like typical network traffic.

Therefore, increasingly, enterprises are adopting automated tools that can instantly identify suspicious or abnormal traffic. For instance, the Security Information and Event Management System (SIEM) has real-time network traffic monitoring capabilities and can sometimes even be used to identify malware used to communicate within network servers.

2. Common cybersecurity measure: data loss prevention (DLP) systems

DLP can be helpful but also come with challenges. After all, DLP is a policy-driven engine, and it can be hard to formulate policies that cover every contingency. For this reason, DLP typically misses a lot. Tools like DLP often fail to identify data exfiltration from insider threats and don’t provide a deep immunity to ransomware.

Organizations often set up corporate DLP solutions to identify data use policy violations and stop data loss. But, again, there are issues with this strategy, such as the fact that it involves uncovering, classifying, and comprehending reams of sensitive data. The amount of backend work this requires on the part of the organization—as part of a comprehensive data discovery and classification procedure—can often be prohibitive.

Beyond that, there’s the fact that these solutions require near-constant maintenance. Teams must continuously monitor and adjust their policy rules to ensure that the definitions and sources of sensitive data are correctly updated. Given the rapid speed at which these settings and needs typically change, this need for constant maintenance can cause significant problems.

See More: Want to Keep Data Secure? 4 Key Strategies to Avoid Data Loss

3. Deploy encryption-in-use

Arguably. This is the most clear-eyed,  realistic strategy. At least, it’s the one most reconciled to the state of things: it takes breaches as a given (as every company should) and tries to limit its potential blast radius. Traditional encryption is valuable, but it doesn’t amount to much if an attack has direct access to your database. Encryption-in-use ensures your data retains encryption even if they have direct access, which means it will only be helpful if the bad guys get access to it.

Deploying encryption-in-use should be a general rule of cybersecurity in 2023 – organizations should be looking for more straightforward solutions. Such solutions are easy to install and allow for flexibility regarding product combinations that suit a customer’s needs. (Post-attack support is a valuable bonus.)

Again, detecting data exfiltration can be impossible, even under the best circumstances. Using defenses like tokenization and encryption-in-use is one of the few surefire strategies to prevent the massive reputational, financial, and emotional loss that any breach typically entails.

There is no question that this is a frightening time to be charged with data protection. Bad actors have proved themselves limitlessly capable of harm: as we know, they will go to tremendous lengths to exfiltrate valuable data for various nefarious purposes. Luckily, the good guys are fighting back in real-time: every day, new and innovative solutions are arriving on the market to combat these attackers. Meanwhile, organizations are more cognizant than ever of the defensive measures they must take to protect their valuable data. With the right strategy, great suffering can be prevented by both companies and their customers.

What challenges have you faced with data exfiltration in your organization, and how have you tackled them? Share your thoughts with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!

Image Source: Shutterstock

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Arti Arora Raman
Arti Raman is the founder and CEO of Titaniam. She specializes in advanced data protection techniques including high-performance encryption-in-use. Prior to Titaniam, she was a senior product management leader and head of UX and competitive intelligence for Symantec’s enterprise business. Arti holds a number of patents. She was the youngest and the first female recipient of the Rosenthal Award for outstanding contribution to the field of investment and finance for her work with late Dr. Ed Lazear, former US Chief Economist and Nobel laureate, Dr. Michael Spence. Arti holds degrees in Business, Economics, and Mathematics.
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