Your data is at its most vulnerable when it travels across networks. This data in motion—information actively moving between locations—faces different security challenges than stored data sitting safely in databases or file systems.
And the surge in remote work and cloud adoption has dramatically raised the stakes. Every day, sensitive information flows through countless connection points between home offices, corporate networks, and cloud platforms. Without proper protection, it opens up opportunities for breaches that can devastate your business and trigger serious compliance violations.
Below, we’ll share some practical, battle-tested strategies to help you protect your data in motion. And we’ll walk you through how Teramind’s behavioral DLP platform helps protect data in motion.
Step 1: Implement Robust Encryption for All Data Transfers
When you encrypt information before it leaves your network, you make it nearly impossible for unauthorized parties to access sensitive data, even if they intercept it. In fact, studies show that properly implemented encryption can reduce the risk of data breaches by over 70%. Here’s what you can do:
Deploy TLS/SSL Across All Communications
TLS (Transport Layer Security) and its predecessor SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) create encrypted tunnels for data moving between clients and servers and encrypt data itself so that information is safe from eavesdropping and tampering. To set up this base security layer, you should use TLS 1.2 (or ideally TLS 1.3) across all web applications, email systems, and API connections.
Don’t let expired certificates become your downfall. Set up automated monitoring tools that alert you before certificates expire and verify them through Certificate Transparency logs and OCSP stapling. Your web servers should reject attempts to downgrade to weaker protocols through HTTP Strict Transport Security policies.
Implement End-to-End Encryption for Sensitive Communications
End-to-end encryption gives you maximum protection and keeps your data encrypted from the moment it leaves your device until it reaches its destination. You should add PGP or S/MIME encryption to your email systems and secure your messaging platforms to protect your communications even if attackers compromise the transmission channels.
Extend this data protection even to mobile devices with MDM solutions that set up encryption for all company data on employee phones and tablets. Back everything up with strong key management – rotate keys regularly, store them in hardware security modules when possible, and assign clear responsibilities for who manages encryption keys.
Secure Remote Access with VPN Technology
VPNs create secure tunnels for remote workers, but you need to configure them correctly. First, turn off split tunneling to force all remote traffic through your corporate network security controls and monitoring systems.
Then, add multi-factor authentication to all VPN connections and combine passwords with hardware tokens or authenticator apps. Choose modern VPN protocols like IKEv2/IPsec or WireGuard that offer strong encryption without slowing down your connections. These protocols work better than older options like PPTP or L2TP/IPsec, especially on mobile networks where connections frequently change.
Step 2: Establish and Enforce Secure Communication Policies
Security fails when people don’t know what to do. That’s why you need clear, practical policies that spell out exactly how to handle data transfers.
Also, document specific rules for each system so your team never has to guess what “secure” means when sending sensitive information.
Create Data Handling Procedures by Classification
Start by building a simple classification system:
- Public
- Internal
- Confidential
- Restricted
The above list works for most organizations. Define each level clearly and attach specific handling rules to each. For example, ‘Restricted data’ might require end-to-end data encryption and approval before sharing. In contrast ‘Internal data’ can move freely within your company network but needs encryption before external transfer.
Define exactly which transmission methods security protocols are allowed for each type of data, without any room for interpretation. Instead of saying “use secure methods,” specify that confidential data requires TLS-protected email with attachments secured by password-protected archives.
You should also document clear procedures for sharing data with vendors, partners, and customers. Create step-by-step guides showing how to package, encrypt, and transmit different data types to external parties. These processes prevent the “just this once” exceptions that lead to breaches.
Implement Technical Controls for Policy Enforcement
You should add technical controls that carry out your policies automatically. Deploy email DLP gateways that scan messages and attachments for sensitive content like credit card numbers, health information, or custom patterns specific to your business.
Then, set up Cloud Access Security Brokers to monitor and control how your team shares data through services like Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. These tools let you block unauthorized sharing block sensitive data and prevent uploads of sensitive data to personal accounts.
Install secure file transfer solutions and build policy enforcement into the transfer process itself. These systems force encryption, verify recipient identities, maintain audit logs, and can even set expiration dates for access.
Train Employees on Secure Data Transmission
Develop role-specific training that tackles the actual data-sharing issues each department faces. For example, show marketing teams how to safely share creative files with agencies and teach finance how to securely exchange financial data with auditors.
This can be simple one-page reference guides that employees can keep at their desks or bookmark on their browsers. Quick-reference tools help people make smart decisions when they’re busy and under pressure – exactly when security shortcuts are most tempting. Include decision trees that guide workers through “if this, then that” scenarios based on data types and recipients.
You can test your team with simulated phishing emails requesting sensitive file transfers, have “vendors” call requesting data sent through unauthorized channels, or create mock urgent situations where proper procedures might be bypassed.
Step 3: Secure Your Network Infrastructure
Strategic network architecture with proper segmentation creates natural checkpoints where you can monitor, filter, and even protect sensitive data and information flows.
Here’s how you can set it up:
Implement Network Segmentation
Divide your network into security zones based on what lives there. Highly sensitive financial data belongs in a different zone than your public-facing website. This segmentation prevents breaches by limiting what attackers can reach after compromising one system.
Use VLANs, firewalls, and access control lists as the barriers between these segments. These technical controls create hard boundaries that malware and attackers can’t easily cross, even if they compromise credentials from a less-protected zone. Also, apply the “least privilege” principle to all cross-segment communication.
You can monitor this zone-crossing traffic with Teramind to detect unusual data movement patterns – like accounting data suddenly flowing to the marketing segment or sensitive customer information moving to development servers.
Deploy Advanced Threat Protection
Set up next-generation firewalls with deep packet inspection that looks inside encrypted traffic to spot malicious content and protect data from theft. These systems understand application behaviors and can block specific actions rather than just ports and protocols.
Then, add intrusion detection and prevention systems configured specifically to catch attacks that target data in transit. These systems recognize patterns of known exfiltration techniques and can automatically block suspicious connections.
You can connect these network security tools with Teramind’s user behavior analytics to get the context around network events. For example, when your firewall flags suspicious outbound traffic, Teramind shows you exactly which user initiated it and what they were doing at that moment.
Secure the DNS Layer
DNS hijacking lets attackers redirect your data without touching your systems. You need DNSSEC to cryptographically verify DNS responses and prevent spoofing attacks that could send your data to fake servers controlled by attackers.
Add DNS filtering services that block communication with known malicious domains. These services maintain constantly updated blacklists of command-and-control servers, phishing sites, and known data theft destinations.
Don’t forget to watch your DNS queries for data theft patterns. DNS tunneling is a sneaky exfiltration technique that hides stolen data inside seemingly legitimate DNS queries. Unusual query volumes or repeated requests to new domains could mean that someone’s smuggling your data out through this often-overlooked channel.
Step 4: Implement Continuous Monitoring and Response
Even the best security measures fail without proper monitoring. That’s why you should set up systems that watch your data movements around the clock and alert you to suspicious activities before they become breaches.
Deploy Real-time Data Transmission Monitoring
Install network traffic analysis tools that watch data flows across your infrastructure, so you can catch unusual patterns immediately. Pay special attention to what leaves your network. Your monitoring systems should track unusual data transfers, especially to unfamiliar IP addresses or countries where you don’t do business.
It’s also a good idea to create alerts for sensitive data movements that happen at suspicious times or from unusual places. Employees rarely have legitimate reasons to access and transfer large amounts of customer data at 2 AM on a Sunday.
Establish User Behavior Baselines
Create baseline profiles for different user groups based on their normal data-handling patterns. Then, tune your monitoring tools to detect deviations from these baselines. When an HR employee suddenly transfers hundreds of employee records at rest data, when they typically only handle a few per day, your system should flag these for immediate review.
Move from simple rule-based alerts to context-aware security that considers multiple factors together. A single unusual factor might be explainable, but combinations rarely are. When a user connects from a new location, outside normal hours, accesses unusual data, and transfers it to a new destination – all at once – it’s likely an attack in progress.
Create an Incident Response Playbook
Create specific response procedures for different scenarios – credential theft, insider, data loss prevention, theft, and accidental exposures all require different approaches.
Document these procedures in clear, actionable steps that responders can follow under pressure. Your playbook should detail the commands to block specific connections at the firewall, disable compromised accounts, and isolate affected systems.
Also, create standardized investigation templates that guide your team through forensic analysis. They should include what network logs to collect, how to preserve evidence, and how to determine what data was potentially exposed.
Responding to Data in Motion Security Incidents
Despite your best preventive efforts, security incidents will still occur. How quickly you detect, contain, and remediate these breaches determines how much damage they cause to your organization.
And a well-designed incident response plan specifically built for data loss in transit incidents can mean the difference between a minor security event and a devastating data breach.
Incident Detection and Containment
Set your security tools to trigger immediate alerts to your incident response team when they detect unusual patterns. The alerts should include enough contextual information for responders to assess the situation and determine if it’s a false alarm or an actual security incident.
It’s important to quickly isolate compromised endpoints or user accounts to prevent attackers from moving laterally through your network and accessing other data sources.
Forensic Analysis of Data Transmission
After you contain the incident, the forensic analysis should show what happened and what data was exposed. Session recordings from security tools like Teramind provide visual evidence of exactly what the user saw and did during the incident, while network logs show where data was sent.
Attribution analysis determines whether the incident came from an external attack, insider threat, or accidental exposure by a legitimate user. Each scenario has different remediation approaches, from patching technical weaknesses to handling potential insider threats through HR and legal channels.
How Teramind Secures Data in Motion
Teramind handles data in motion security with powerful, comprehensive protection that tackles data security from every angle—prevention, detection, and response.
Here’s precisely how it can help:
Real-time Visibility and Control
Teramind monitors all data transmission channels, including email, web uploads, cloud storage, instant messaging, and file transfers, to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Whether it’s an email with attachments, a file sent via Slack, or an upload to Google Drive, Teramind tracks it all with precision.
The platform includes content-aware inspection, which digs into the data being transmitted to spot sensitive information like personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), confidential business data, etc. Using smart analytics and predefined templates, it recognizes these data types as they’re sent—whether in a message, a document, or a screenshot.
Administrators get hands-on control with granular policies that let them decide what’s allowed, blocked, or flagged based on the content, where it’s headed, and who’s sending it. Plus, real-time dashboards pull it all together and show every data movement across the organization instantly.
Automated Policy Enforcement
Teramind lets you configure rules that automatically block unauthorized transmission methods for classified data—no manual intervention is needed. Whether it’s an attempt to send sensitive files via unapproved email, upload them to a risky cloud service, or copy them to a USB drive, Teramind’s policy engine steps in instantly to stop it.
You can also set up risk-based policies that increase security based on how sensitive the data is and where it’s headed. For example, you can define higher scrutiny for transfers involving personal identifiable information, PII or financial records, especially if they’re bound for external destinations with higher risk levels.
When business-critical transfers need to happen, Teramind’s exception workflows keep things moving securely, and admins can approve specific actions with predefined controls, so flexibility doesn’t compromise safety.
Read the Teramind Rules Guide to learn more.
User Behavior Analytics for Advanced Threat Detection
Teramind’s analytics dig deep into how users and departments typically handle data transmission and build a clear baseline of what’s normal for each.
When behavior strays—like a late-night file upload from an employee who usually works 9-to-5, or a sudden spike in data sent to an unfamiliar destination—Teramind flags it instantly. The system catches anomalies such as unusual transfer sizes, unexpected data access in times, or even a user poking around files they don’t normally touch.
What’s more, Teramind prioritizes the risks with scoring algorithms and pattern recognition. Alerts get ranked based on how sensitive the data is (e.g., PII or trade secrets) and how far the behavior strays from the norm, so you know where to focus first.
Comprehensive Incident Response Capabilities
When suspicious data transmission activities pop up, Teramind jumps into action with immediate alerts that let your team respond fast. Whether it’s an odd file transfer or an unexpected upload, the platform notifies you the moment something looks off.
Teramind’s session recording feature also captures every move in full visual detail. It records exactly how data was accessed and sent, showing the user’s screen as they clicked, typed, or moved files. This clear evidence gives your team a solid starting point to understand what happened.
Security teams can use the platform to terminate risky connections, lock down endpoints, or block user access entirely if exfiltration is suspected—all with a few clicks.
Conclusion: Maintaining a Robust Data-in-Motion Security Program
Keeping data secure as it moves through your systems is not a one-and-done task, but it takes constant attention and regular check-ins. Organizations need to treat data-in-motion security as an ongoing program to stay ahead of new risks.
Conducting Regular Security Assessments
To keep your data in motion security safe, start with quarterly reviews of your data flow maps. These reviews help you spot any new pathways that might have come up, like a recently adopted app or a forgotten file-sharing tool, and ensure they’re secured properly.
Next, increase your defense with regular penetration testing focused on data in movement weak spots, alongside reviews of your encryption setup to keep it up to speed with the latest standards. With Teramind’s assessment capabilities, you can quickly and easily zero in on any gaps in your current controls.
Measuring Program Effectiveness
To see how well your data in motion security program is holding up, set up key metrics like the percentage of encrypted transfers or the number of policy violations. These numbers give you a clear, no-nonsense way to see if your defenses are doing their job and prove it to stakeholders or auditors with solid evidence.
As new threats come up or your business develops, you should review and tweak your security controls to stay ahead, whether that’s tightening policies or setting up new encryption methods. With Teramind’s analytics and reports, you’ve got the tools to spot trends, adapt fast, and keep your program effective.
