One Way To Prevent Your Data From Being Exfiltrated

Akins IT • December 26, 2019
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Usually, when the topic of network security arises, it tends to revolve around the strategy of securing the environment from external attacks. This involves not just securing your network perimeter with a firewall, but also email security, endpoint protection, and end user awareness.

These are all important facets to your overall security posture; but another layer to include in this picture that will ensure that you’re approaching security as holistically as possible, is to ensure that your data is protected from being exfiltrated.


DATA EXFILTRATION


Data exfiltration is the unauthorized copying, transfer or retrieval of data from a computer or server. Although it’s a common practice to ensure that infiltration is mitigated by deploying security solutions (i.e. AV, IPS, Email Security), many forget to ensure that their existing data is protected from being transferred to unauthorized locations.

How can you ensure that sensitive data such as social security and credit card numbers aren’t being transferred beyond the boundaries of your network? Or that important documents intended for internal use only, continue to remain internal and are never shared to external sources? Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is one of the solutions available to make this possible.


DATA LOSS PREVENTION (DLP)


Although there are multiple solutions available for DLP to be implemented, it is worth noting that this feature is available on some NG {Next Generation) Firewalls. The FortiGate security appliance, for example, does provide DLP as an included feature that can be enabled. This is configurable as a security profile which can be applied on a per firewall policy basis. DLP monitors a set of network protocols along with configurable rules to ensure that files and embedded content leaving the network adheres to company policy. Additional features, such as, file share fingerprinting and message archiving can also be enabled to enhance the functionality of DLP.

It is also important to note that in order for DLP to work at its highest level of accuracy, SSH deep packet inspection must be enabled.

AWS stumbled this morning. Here’s why multi‑cloud keeps you moving.

By Shawn Akins • October 20, 2025
October 20, 2025 — Early today, Amazon Web Services experienced a major incident centered in its US‑EAST‑1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS reports the event began around 12:11 a.m. PT and tied back to DNS resolution affecting DynamoDB , with mitigation within a couple of hours and recovery continuing thereafter. As the outage rippled, popular services like Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite , and even some Amazon properties saw disruptions before recovering. If your apps or data are anchored to a single cloud, a morning like this can turn into a help‑desk fire drill. A multi‑cloud or cloud‑smart approach helps you ride through these moments with minimal end‑user impact. What happened (and why it matters) Single‑region fragility: US‑EAST‑1 is massive—and when it sneezes, the internet catches a cold. Incidents here have a history of wide blast radius. Shared dependencies: DNS issues to core services (like DynamoDB endpoints) can cascade across workloads that never directly “touch” that service. Multi‑cloud: practical resilience, not buzzwords For mid‑sized orgs, schools, and local government, multi‑cloud doesn’t have to mean “every app in every cloud.” It means thoughtful redundancy where it counts : Multi‑region or multi‑provider failover for critical apps Run active/standby across AWS and Azure (or another provider), or at least across two AWS regions with automated failover. Start with citizen‑facing portals, SIS/LMS access, emergency comms, and payment gateways. Portable platforms Use Kubernetes and containers, keep state externalized, and standardize infra with Terraform/Ansible so you can redeploy fast when a region (or a provider) wobbles. (Today’s DNS hiccup is exactly the kind of scenario this protects against.) Resilient data layers Replicate data asynchronously across clouds/regions; choose databases with cross‑region failover and test RPO/RTO quarterly. If you rely on a managed database tied to one region, design an escape hatch. Traffic and identity that float Use global traffic managers/DNS to shift users automatically; keep identity (MFA/SSO) highly available and not hard‑wired to a single provider’s control plane. Run the playbook Document health checks, automated cutover, and comms templates. Then practice —tabletops and live failovers. Many services today recovered within hours, but only teams with rehearsed playbooks avoided user‑visible downtime. The bottom line Cloud concentration risk is real. Outages will happen—what matters is whether your constituents, students, and staff feel it. A pragmatic multi‑cloud stance limits the blast radius and keeps your mission‑critical services online when one provider has a bad day. Need a resilience check? Akins IT can help you prioritize which systems should be multi‑cloud, design the right level of redundancy, and validate your failover plan—without overspending. Let’s start with a quick, 30‑minute review of your most critical services and RPO/RTO targets. (No slideware, just actionable next steps.)

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