Protecting Sensitive Data in SharePoint Online with Data Loss Prevention

With the shift to remote work and reliance on cloud apps like SharePoint Online, organizations need robust data loss prevention to secure sensitive information. Learn how to leverage DLP policies in SharePoint Online to detect, monitor, and automatically protect sensitive data.

TL;DR:

• SharePoint Online offers native DLP capabilities to identify and secure sensitive data like financial, medical, or intellectual property information.
• Properly configuring DLP policies involves defining sensitive info types, monitoring user activities, setting permissions, and enabling protective actions.
• Best practices include training users, testing policies in simulation mode, classifying data, and integrating DLP with sensitivity labels.
• Monitoring DLP policy matches, overrides, and violations in reports and alerts enables continuous policy refinement.
• With well-designed DLP policies, SharePoint Online provides powerful data loss prevention without third-party tools.

Securing Sensitive Information in SharePoint Online

For modern organizations, SharePoint Online has become the hub for collaborating on documents, sharing files, and managing content. However, with sensitive data now flowing through SharePoint, airtight data loss prevention is crucial.

DLP capabilities are built right into SharePoint Online, allowing organizations to set policies that detect and automatically protect sensitive information across sites and libraries. By leveraging SharePoint Online DLP, organizations can:

• Identify and classify sensitive information using definitions for credit cards, health records, source code, and other confidential data types.
• Monitor and control how users access, share, and distribute sensitive information within or outside the organization.
• Block unauthorized activities like sharing files externally or downloading data to unmanaged devices.
• Use machine learning algorithms that recognize sensitive data patterns and contexts.
• Receive alerts on DLP policy matches and violations for investigation.

With SharePoint Online DLP, organizations gain granular control and visibility over their sensitive data. When properly configured, DLP policies continuously monitor user activity across SharePoint Online and intervene to prevent data loss.

Constructing Effective SharePoint Online Data Loss Prevention Policies

Creating robust DLP policies in SharePoint Online involves bringing together the right components to identify sensitive data and trigger protective actions. Follow these steps:

Choose Locations

Apply policies broadly across all SharePoint sites or selectively target specific sites and libraries containing priority data.

Classify Sensitive Information

Leverage built-in sensitive information types like health records or custom types specific to your organization.

Define User Activities

Specify the actions on sensitive data to detect like sharing externally or downloading files.

Set Permissions and Restrictions

Configure who can access sensitive data and what they can do with it.

Enable Protective Actions

Block unauthorized activities, restrict access, apply encryption, or trigger alerts.

Customize Policy Tips

Warn users when their actions violate DLP policies with customizable pop-up messages.

Configure Alerts

Set up email notifications when users engage in prohibited sharing of sensitive data.

With these components in place, SharePoint Online DLP policies can accurately identify sensitive data and take automated action to prevent its loss.

Optimizing SharePoint Online Data Loss Prevention Policies

Creating an effective DLP policy requires fine-tuning to maximize protection while minimizing business disruptions. Follow these best practices:

Start With Simulation Mode

Test policies by enabling simulation mode, which doesn't enforce actions. Analyze results before switching to full enforcement.

Classify and Label Data

Use sensitivity labels integrated with DLP policies to classify and label content based on sensitivity levels.

Limit Oversharing

Set external sharing permissions to "Existing Guests" to prevent broader exposure of sensitive data.

Review Policy Alerts

Monitor policy match alerts to identify problem areas and fine-tune rules to improve accuracy.

Analyze DLP Reports

Use built-in DLP reports to analyze policy matches, user overrides, and other metrics to guide policy optimization.

Train Users on DLP

Educate users on DLP policies and provide a process for reporting false positives or requesting exceptions.

Test and Iterate

Keep testing and refining policies even after deployment to ensure they remain accurate and effective over time.

With continuous tuning guided by DLP alerts, reports, and user feedback, organizations can achieve balanced policies that allow productivity while securing sensitive data.

Monitoring Data Loss Prevention Policies and Alerts in SharePoint Online

Ongoing monitoring of DLP policies is crucial to identify potential data exposure. SharePoint Online offers several tools to provide visibility into DLP activities:

DLP Alerts Dashboard

Review alerts triggered by DLP policy matches and investigate incidents.

DLP Policy Matches Report

Analyze trends in sensitive content detection and policy actions taken.

DLP False Positives Report

Identify overbroad rules flagged by users for modifications to improve accuracy.

Activity Explorer

Filter DLP events like policy matches, overrides, and data egress.

By proactively monitoring alerts, reports, and events, administrators can fine-tune policies to eliminate false positives and ensure accurate protection.

How Strac Can Help:

While SharePoint Online offers native DLP capabilities, organizations seeking more comprehensive protection can benefit from Strac's advanced SaaS/Cloud DLP and Endpoint DLP solution. Strac's features complement and extend SharePoint Online's DLP, providing robust protection across your entire digital ecosystem.

Strac's built-in and custom detectors support all sensitive data elements for PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, and any confidential data, enhancing SharePoint Online's native capabilities. Uniquely, Strac offers detection and redaction capabilities for images and deep content inspection for various document formats. Explore Strac's full catalog of sensitive data elementsto see how it can augment SharePoint Online's DLP.

For organizations concerned about compliance, Strac DLP helps achieve standards for PCI, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO-27001, CCPA, GDPR, and NIST frameworks, ensuring comprehensive protection beyond SharePoint Online. With easy integration, customers can implement Strac and see live scanning and redaction on their SaaS apps, including SharePoint Online, in under 10 minutes.

Strac's machine learning models ensure accurate detection and redaction of sensitive PII, PHI, PCI, and confidential data, minimizing false positives and negatives. The solution offers extensive SaaS integrations, including AI integration with LLM APIs and AI websites like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Microsoft Copilot, providing broader coverage than SharePoint Online's native DLP.

For comprehensive protection that extends beyond SharePoint Online, Strac provides Endpoint DLP that works across SaaS, Cloud, and Endpoint environments. Developers can leverage Strac's API support for custom implementations, while inline redaction capabilities ensure sensitive text is masked or blurred within attachments, even in SharePoint Online documents.

Strac's customizable configurations and out-of-the-box compliance templates allow for flexible, tailored data protection measures that can complement and enhance SharePoint Online's native DLP capabilities.

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Conclusion

As collaboration in SharePoint Online becomes ubiquitous, securing sensitive data against loss is imperative. With its native DLP policies, SharePoint Online provides powerful tools for protecting intellectual property, customer data, financial information, and other sensitive content.

Organizations can dial in DLP policies that automatically secure sensitive information by classifying sensitive data, monitoring user activities, setting permissions, and enabling protective actions. Combined with proper training and continuous policy tuning guided by alerts and reports, SharePoint Online DLP enables organizations to lock down their most confidential data.

Ready to implement robust data loss prevention for SharePoint Online? Contact Strac to explore flexible enterprise DLP tailored to your business. Book a demo today.