The Best Netskope Alternatives for Data Loss Prevention
Securing the digital workplace is critical for the modern enterprise. Netskope is a leading cloud-based security platform that offers a comprehensive suite of security features designed to safeguard valuable data within cloud environments. However, before committing to Netskope, it is crucial to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses against the backdrop of leading alternatives. This blog post delves into the pros and cons of Netskope for data loss prevention, comparing its capabilities against top competitors so you make the right choice for your business needs.
Contents
- What is Netskope?
- The benefits of using Netskope
- How Netskope falls short as a security solution
- Netskope alternatives for data loss prevention (DLP)
- Aware: An all-in-one solution for DLP, eDiscovery, compliance, and information governance
What is Netskope?
Netskope is a cloud-native security platform that helps organizations protect their data in the cloud. Netskope's technology focuses on data loss prevention, threat intelligence, and secure access across various cloud services and applications.
In addition, Netskope enables organizations to seamlessly their cloud services into their existing IT infrastructure while providing insights on how their cloud usage is impacting their security posture. With all these features, Netskope helps organizations take control of their cloud apps and ensure data security in remote working environments.
The benefits of using Netskope
Using Netskope provides a range of benefits for organizations seeking to protect their data by improving their cloud app security posture. Some key objectives businesses can accomplish with Netskope include:
Cloud Security
Gaining visibility into cloud usage to enforce security policies.
Data Protection
Helping to identify and safeguard sensitive information.
Threat Protection
Blocking cyber threats that can lead to data exfiltration.
Secure Remote Work
Granular access controls enforce data restrictions in remote work.
Compliance Controls
Supporting regulatory requirements for data protection and retention.
Shadow IT Reduction
Detecting unauthorized cloud applications and data movement.
By offering a clear picture of their cloud environment, Netskope empowers businesses to make informed decisions about their overall cybersecurity strategy, ultimately enhancing their data protection efforts and mitigating potential threats.
How Netskope falls short as a DLP solution
While Netskope is a widely recognized and effective cloud security platform, it's important to note its limitations and shortcomings, including:
- Resource Intensive: Netskope's monitoring capabilities can be resource intensive, particularly in larger organizations or those with high levels of cloud activity. This could lead to increased demand on network bandwidth and computing resources.
- Reduced Visibility: Compared with a dedicated DLP solution, Netskope may lack visibility into the content and context of messages, relying instead on tracking metrics like app logins and data movement to identify risky behaviors.
- False Positives: Like any security system, Netskope's threat detection mechanisms may generate false positive alerts, which could potentially lead to security analysts spending time investigating non-threatening events.
- Limited Offline Protection: Netskope's primary focus is on cloud and web security, which might leave some gaps in offline device protection or protection when devices are disconnected from the internet.
- Lack of ML Capabilities: Netskope uses OCR and keyword detection machine learning models to identify restricted data, but these methods can be circumvented by users. Some Netskope competitors team these methods with more advanced ML capabilities that may provide better DLP results.
These are some of the challenges frequently raised by real Netskope users across third-party review sites.
Netskope reviews
“Navigating and extracting specific insights from the extensive data could be time-consuming and required a learning curve.”
“Sites load slowly or not at all so users have to turn off their protection to be able to reach any resource.”
“Netskope could improve the policy integration with more friendly parameters within the DLP module of the CASB product. It would make it easier for administrators to use the DLP module.”
“…the configuration and user behavior analytics can be improved. For example, it's either completely blocked or unlocked, so there should be conditional consideration.”
“Netskope should add more features in their endpoint DLP capabilities such as to control copy/paste activities, and screenshots over user endpoints.”
“One aspect that posed challenges was the complexity of its configuration and policy management. Navigating and fine-tuning the various settings and policies required careful attention and expertise.”
Netskope alternatives for data loss prevention (DLP)
Aware for DLP
Aware supports security teams in protecting sensitive data from loss or exfiltration within collaboration tools like Slack, Teams, and Workplace from Meta. The Aware IQ data platform ingests collaboration data in real time and uses proprietary natural language processing (NLP) AI analysis to identify and mitigate unauthorized sharing of sensitive information. Aware also supports granular, bidirectional data retention and archiving policies to enhance information security.
Aware uses a rules-based approach that takes automated action when triggered by an event, supplemented by the industry’s most accurate AI-powered analysis that reduces false positive results. Then, Aware delivers contextual insights into the who, what, where, when, how, and why of the surrounding activity so users can conduct faster, more effective discovery and analysis.
Additional DLP features offered by Aware include real-time pattern matching keyword detection, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and a library of workflow templates to support faster implementation, all available through API and webhook integrations with collaboration tools, enterprise social networks, and cloud storage solutions that do not impact the end user experience.
Microsoft Purview for DLP
Microsoft Purview provides DLP for the Microsoft 365 suite of apps as part of Microsoft E5 Compliance Suite. Purview is easily scalable to meet the needs of organizations of any size and can automatically discover and classify sensitive data across all channels, including endpoints, networks, and the cloud.
The biggest downside of this solution is its limitation to providing DLP within Microsoft products, given that 91% of businesses use two or more collaboration tools. It can also be cost-prohibitive to implement. However, for Microsoft-only workplaces, Microsoft Purview provides valuable security and DLP solutions that are natively integrated and easy to set up and administer.
Proofpoint for DLP
Proofpoint Email DLP is a cloud-based DLP solution designed to protect data within email systems. It offers a wide range of features, including data discovery, classification, and encryption, but it is primarily known for its strong email security and advanced threat detection capabilities.
Proofpoint’s DLP solution is tightly integrated with its email security platform, which gives it an advantage in detecting and responding to email-borne data breaches. However, it may fall short in understanding the movement of sensitive data in collaboration tools, cloud-based documents, and other dynamic apps that lack the formal structure of email communications.
Trellix for DLP
Trellix DLP (the result of a merger between McAfee Enterprise and FireEye) is a flexible solution that can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. It offers features including data discovery, classification, encryption, access control, monitoring, and reporting. Trellix DLP is also known for its intuitive user interface and ease of use.
Where Trellix really shines is in its on-prem data protections, which can protect data from exfiltration by printing, screen capture, copy-paste, and more. Trellix also offers heightened visibility into sensitive data on managed endpoints. However, some customers feel that Trellix struggles to stay up-to-date with the latest data risks, and it can be complex to configure and manage.
Zscaler for DLP
Zscaler Data Protection offers comprehensive protection for data across all channels, including endpoints, data in transit, and data at rest. Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange secure web gateway is supported by user entity and behavior analytics (UEBA), OCR, indexed document matching (IDM) and more, enabling a wide range of DLP features, including data discovery, monitoring, and reporting. However, technical assessments of Zscaler’s secure access service edge (SASE) and security service edge (SSE) capabilities have revealed increased limitations in recent years compared with similar products.
While reviewers feel that Zscaler performs well for zero trust network access (ZTNA), Zscaler’s alert dashboard is more simplistic than other offerings, and splitting features into multiple dashboards makes Zscaler more time-consuming to administer.
Aware: An all-in-one solution for DLP, eDiscovery, compliance, and information governance
Aware provides comprehensive governance, security, and insights through data loss prevention (DLP), eDiscovery, and real-time sentiment analysis capabilities for collaboration tools from a single, centralized platform.
Why real users trust Aware:
- “Ability to run quick searches across the enterprise is awesome, even if msg was deleted.”
- “The ability to keep a pulse on employee conversation sentiment has been valuable.”
- “Love being able to pull the exact same report month to month.”
- “Customer support has been amazing!”
- “No complaints while using this software program.”
Learn more about Aware
Aware for Acceptable Use
- Protect data and enforce safe handling with customizable rules
- Identify policy violations with real-time monitoring
- Connect to existing workflows for faster assessment and remediation
Aware for Federated Search & Discovery
- Expedite discovery with continuous data capture into search-ready archives
- Refine search results by custodian, time and date, sentiment and more
- Go deeper with contextualized results to discover the who, what, where, when, how, and why
Aware for Compliance Adherence
- Set and automate enforcement of granular retention policies
- Take real-time action to mitigate noncompliance and coach employees
- Supports all major compliance regulations, including FINRA, HIPAA, HITRUST, GDPR, PCI
Aware for Data Management & Governance
- See the big picture by consolidating collaboration data in one platform
- AI-driven insights learn what’s normal for your organization, reducing false positives
- Get ahead of suspicious activity with 24/7 message ingestion and analysis
Elevate the voice of the employee
Harness the power of your people to protect your data and secure the digital workspace by listening authentically to the topics that are top-of-mind.
Using the Aware platform, leaders can identify fluctuations in employee sentiment in real time, quickly pinpointing increases in toxicity and surfacing more instances of risky behavior while supporting and protecting their company culture.
Learn more about Aware for employee experience
Unify governance and minimize data loss with one solution
Aware empowers workspace administrators to holistically address information security, compliance, and employee experience in all their collaboration datasets from a single centralized platform. Request a demo today to learn more.
