Data Loss Prevention: Forcepoint vs. Symantec

The ever-growing risk of sensitive data leaks has led to the emergence of data loss prevention (DLP) solutions. Organizations are constantly looking for ways to reduce the risk of such data leaks and are using DLP solutions to secure data and comply with regulations. 

In summary, DLP is the act of identifying and preventing data exfiltration, data breaches, and destruction of sensitive data. DLP software relies on a multitude of core technologies that help its engine to correctly identify the sensitive data that organizations should secure and take remediation action to avoid data-related mishaps. 

DLP tools allow you to:

• Detect sensitive data that needs protection (achieve data visibility)
• Fortify endpoints
• Secure data that is in use
• Protect data that is in motion
• Secure data that is at rest
• Identify data leaks

Insider threats, extrusion by attackers, and unintentional data exposure may lead to data leaks—opt for a DLP solution at the earliest to protect your organization’s sensitive data. 

Let’s explore the DLP solutions offered by Forcepoint and Symantec. 

Also read: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Best Practices & Strategies

Forcepoint DLP

Forcepoint DLP enables you to secure data while enabling productivity. The DLP security solution focuses on automation, user risk and unified policies to make data security intuitive and frictionless. 

Key Differentiators 

• Individualized, adaptive security drives business productivity. You can control data with a single policy and block actions only where necessary. 
• Dynamic data protection (DDP) leverages user behavior analytics to understand an individual’s risk level. Risk-adaptive data protection automatically blocks actions on the basis of an individual’s risk level. 
• A predefined policy library enables you to view and control data. A library of over 370 policies ensures and accelerates regulatory compliance across 83 countries.
• Securely collaborate with parties outside your organization using policy-based auto-encryption. 
• Automate data labeling and classification by integrating with third-party data classification tools like Boldon James and Microsoft Azure Information Protection. 
• Optical character recognition (OCR) detects data that is embedded in images while in motion or at rest. 
• Vigorous identification for personally identifiable information (PII) offers context identifiers, proximity analysis, real name detection, and data validation checks. 
• With machine learning (ML), users can train the system to detect relevant, undiscovered data. 
• The solution offers custom encryption identification and cumulative analysis for drip DLP identification as well. 
• Identify, manage, and remediate data protection risk by coaching employees and enforcing advanced DLP data identification capabilities. 

Pricing: Request a free trial today. You can schedule a demo as well. 

Symantec Data Loss Prevention

Symantec Data Loss Prevention by Broadcom enables you to drive complete protection of sensitive data. The enterprise-grade DLP solution helps you mitigate data breaches and compliance risks with ease. 

Key Differentiators 

• From a single pane of glass, you can manage policies, incident response, administration, and reporting.
• Make use of over 70 prebuilt policy templates and a policy builder to get things started.
• Utilize a single set of policies and workflow for communication channels like cloud, endpoints, email, web, and storage. 
• Comprehensive discovery, monitoring, and protection capabilities give you complete visibility and control over confidential data. You can discover data across every communication channel, monitor how it is being used, and protect it from being stolen or exposed in real time.  
• Leverage robust remediation and workflow capabilities to automate and streamline incident response processes for environments of high traffic.
• User and entity behavior analytics help you accelerate incident response. 
• Real-time blocking, alerts, and quarantining deter and prevent end users from leaking sensitive data. 
• The solution offers image recognition, advanced ML, and fingerprinting and describing technologies to accurately find and classify sensitive data.
• You can leverage integration with Web Security Service and Symantec ProxySG to ensure sensitive data does not get leaked over encrypted or untrusted web traffic. 
• Share data more securely with business partners with Access Management and Symantec VIP Security.  

Pricing: Contact the Broadcom team for product pricing details. 

Choosing DLP Software

Overall, Symantec Data Loss Prevention is better than Forcepoint DLP in each category of evaluation (DLP capabilities, evaluation and contracting, integration and deployment, and service and support) and is our preferred choice. 

That said, Forcepoint DLP is a popular customer choice and is worth exploring. Delve into the features of each DLP software in detail, determine ease of deployment, configuration flexibility, and pricing flexibility, and purchase a solution accordingly.  

Read next: Best Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Software & Tools