I’ve worked with a lot of enterprise customers over the years—big ones, too—and a common struggle I see is with their Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies. Even though they’ve had the product for years, they often face one of two issues: either the policies are too weak and don’t flag anything, or they’re too strict, overwhelming teams with false alerts. When DLP policies aren’t properly tuned, it creates gaps that can lead to business disruptions and even huge losses.
A well-known example is NASA’s ITAR email filtering issue in 2019, where an excessively strict DLP policy blocked legitimate emails, grinding operations to a halt. While there are many such cases, enterprises rarely disclose disruptions caused by poor policy design. The stakes are simply too high—reputation, confidential information, and, most importantly, customer trust are all on the line. Because of this, companies are often reluctant to seek external help in refining their security policy infrastructure, even when expert guidance could prevent costly mistakes. Ultimately, security software vendors play a crucial role in simplifying policy tuning, ensuring enterprises can strike the right balance between protection and usability.
