What is data loss prevention?
Data loss prevention (DLP) is a security discipline that prevents unauthorized access to or exposure of sensitive data through discovery, classification, and control. It protects PII, financial data, and intellectual property from loss or theft.
What risks are organizations managing today?
Human error
Most data loss is unintentional — someone sends an email to the wrong recipient, uploads a sensitive file to an AI tool, or gives the wrong permissions to a confidential page.
Insider risk
Employees, contractors, or partners can maliciously exploit their access. AI accelerates this threat, letting them rapidly find and download vast amounts of confidential company data.
Cyberattacks
External attackers use phishing, malware, ransomware, and other means to expose sensitive data. AI is making these attacks easier to scale and harder to detect.
What’s at stake?
The fallout of data exposure extends beyond direct costs and impacts every layer of your business.
58%
of consumers would not trust a brand that falls victim to a breach with their data, and recovery can take years.
$4.44M
is the average cost of a data breach, resulting from penalties, legal fees, and lost business.
$178/record
is the cost of stolen intellectual property, making it the most expensive type of data to lose.
According to Vercara Consumer Trust & Risk Report 2024 and IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025
How does DLP help you manage risk?
DLP strengthens your security foundation through discovery, classification, and control so you can confidently scale AI.
Discover
Surface sensitive data wherever it lives (at rest, in transit, or in use) before exposed data becomes a liability.
Classify
Label your data by sensitivity level, such as Public, Internal, Confidential, or Restricted, so every piece of information automatically gets the right level of protection.
Control
Enforce policies based on classification and context. Automatically protect vulnerable data by blocking exports, restricting public links, and preventing anonymous access.
Deploy DLP across the Atlassian Platform
[Using Guard full-site scanning,] we found thousands of detections that could be a violation…We sent users a note letting them know we'd redact the information within 24 hours if no action was taken. We ended up redacting over 60% of occurrences in about 45 minutes. That was a win to keep our data secure.
SUDHANVA RAMESH
VP, Office of Agile Tools Lead, Synchrony Financial