What is Data Protection?

Data protection is the process of safeguarding important information from theft or loss. These actions can be malicious or unintentional, but a robust data protection program will protect against both.

A large part of data protection is ensuring that data is accessible for authorized purposes only, as well as being compliant with necessary regulatory requirements.

Every day the data that businesses are creating and storing is growing. With hybrid work environments making remote collaboration a reality of daily business, and companies choosing to migrate technology to the cloud for both cost-saving and efficiency purposes, enterprise data protection is more important than ever to protect data regardless of where it is or how it is used.

Data protection programs can be primarily focused on two broad uses – ensuring protection and auditing of regulated data such as PCI, PII, or PHI, or protecting the intellectual property organizations rely upon to expand their business. Any program must balance the needs of protection with the risks of sharing. Overly aggressive programs can stifle business processes, while overly lenient programs can lead to excessive risk.

Data Protection vs. Data Security

The terms data protection and data security are often used interchangeably, and while there are similarities, there are also important differences between the two.

Data Protection Solutions from Fortra

Organizations rely on sensitive data to serve their customers, fuel innovation, and grow. Security leaders need a way to find and understand that data, then protect it from loss or theft while within their extended enterprise, and securely share it outside of their extended enterprise.

Fortra's leading data protection offering combines data classification, with data loss prevention, and digital rights management, to deliver data protection throughout the entire data lifecycle.