The State Department needed to enhance its data protection capabilities in response to evolving security threats and compliance requirements. Despite existing measures, the State Department faces challenges in effectively managing and securing sensitive data across its diverse IT environments, including on-premises and cloud applications. The complexity of IT infrastructure, coupled with the stringent compliance standards it must adhere to, necessitates a comprehensive approach to data loss prevention (DLP) that can adapt to changing business processes, regulatory landscapes, and emerging security vulnerabilities.
Key Challenges:
- Complex IT Environment: The department operates a complex IT infrastructure with data spread across various platforms and applications, making consistent data protection challenging.
- Compliance Requirements: Compliance with industry and regulatory standards requires the State department to implement and maintain stringent data protection policies and procedures.
- Evolving Security Threats: The dynamic nature of cybersecurity threats necessitates ongoing adjustments to DLP policies and configurations to protect against new vulnerabilities.
- Data Visibility and Control: Limited visibility and control over sensitive data across cloud and on-premises environments hinder effective data protection and incident response.
- Policy Management and Tuning: Existing DLP policies may not be fully optimized for State Department’s specific business needs, resulting in potential security gaps or inefficiencies.
- Incident Remediation Workflow: The lack of a streamlined incident remediation and workflow process that aligns with organizational structure complicates the timely resolution of security incidents.
- Technical and Operational Documentation: Inadequate documentation of DLP project design, server operations, and policy logic challenges the understanding and management of the DLP environment.
- Knowledge Transfer: The need for effective knowledge transfer to State staff to ensure self-sufficiency in supporting the Symantec DLP platform and monitoring incidents.
The proposed solution offered by Radian Solutions for this project focuses on enhancing the State Department’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities, ensuring compliance with relevant standards, and securing sensitive data across various platforms and cloud services. This comprehensive approach includes a series of tasks designed to review, refine, and implement DLP policies, configurations, and system upgrades, as well as to provide essential documentation and knowledge transfer.
Here’s a breakdown of the proposed solution across the project’s phases:
- Task 1: DLP Policy Tuning: Review policies to protect high-risk data, aligning with compliance standards. Provide direction on incident remediation and workflow procedures to fit the organizational structure.
- Task 2: Configuration Changes: Refine CASB configurations to meet evolving business needs of the organization.
- Task 3: Upgrades and Patches: Apply Oracle’s quarterly CPU releases, ensuring the system is up-to-date with the latest security patches and product updates.
- Task 4: Documentation: Develop design documentation detailing the DLP Project’s business requirements and technical design. Provide Server Operational Procedure documentation outlining the roles of servers in the Symantec DLP environment. Create policy documentation explaining the logic behind designed and deployed DLP Policies.
- Task 5: Planning Phase: Conduct a review of Hosted Service Environment requirements and develop a detailed project plan for the DLP project. Engage in DLP Policy Review and regular bi-weekly project status meetings.
- Task 6: Architectural Design Phase: Review the Cloud SOC solution and design access and roles for cloud applications like Jira, Slack, and G-Suite.
- Task 7: Implementation and Configuration: Integrate Symantec Cloud Access Broker solution and configure various components for auditing, gateway operations, and policy testing.
- Task 8: Policy Monitoring Phase: Monitor DLP policies and configure Endpoint Discovery scans as required.
- Task 9: Policy Tuning – Notification Phase: Engage with the State Department for event alerts and policy tuning based on organizational learning and to reduce data loss risk.
- Task 10: Policy Tuning – Block Phase: Transition to taking action on triggered incidents, ensuring policies are revised as needed and moving towards a Block/Pop-Up phase with automated incident responses.
- Task 11: Documentation – Radian Solutions delivered documentation to support the DLP program, including design, server operational procedure, policy documentation, and a knowledge transfer document.
This solution is aimed at fortifying the State department’s defenses against data loss, ensuring compliance with standards, and enhancing the security posture of State department’s IT environment through strategic DLP policy management and system enhancements.
The completion of the project by Radian Solutions, as outlined in the scope of services, provides several benefits and impacts for the State agency:
- Enhanced Data Security: By performing ongoing DLP policy tuning and configuration changes, Radian helped protect its highest-risk data, ensuring compliance with relevant standards and reducing the risk of data breaches.
- Improved Incident Response: The direction provided on incident remediation and workflow procedures helps the State Department respond more effectively to security incidents, minimizing potential damage and ensuring a structured approach to handling sensitive data.
- Up-to-date Systems: Regular updates and patches for DLP and Oracle systems ensure that the infrastructure remains secure against emerging threats and vulnerabilities, maintaining the integrity of its data.
- Comprehensive Documentation: The creation of design, server operational procedure, and policy documentation provides a clear understanding of its DLP project, facilitating better management and future enhancements.
- Strategic Planning: The planning phase, including the review of hosted service environment requirements and DLP policy review, enables to develop a detailed project plan, ensuring that the DLP implementation aligns with its business needs and objectives.
- Architectural Alignment: The architectural design phase helps ensure that its Cloud SOC solution meets its security and device management requirements, particularly for cloud applications like Jira, Slack, and G-Suite.
- Effective Implementation: The implementation and configuration phase, including the integration of Symantec Cloud Access Broker solution and configuration of DLP inspection for various applications, ensures that the DLP solution is effectively deployed and operational.
- Ongoing Monitoring: The policy monitoring phase allows the State Department to continuously monitor its DLP policies, ensuring they remain effective and aligned with industry norms and state requirements.
- Proactive Policy Tuning: The notification and block phases of DLP policy tuning enable the State Department to take proactive measures in response to incidents, such as educating employees, revising business processes, and relocating sensitive data, further reducing the risk of data loss.
- Knowledge Transfer: Providing knowledge transfer to the State staff ensures that they are equipped to manage and support the Symantec DLP platform independently, enhancing their self-sufficiency and capability to handle security incidents.
Overall, the completion of this project significantly strengthens the State Department’s ability to protect its sensitive data, comply with regulatory standards, and respond effectively to security incidents, ultimately enhancing its overall cybersecurity posture.