Companies that started by installing such tools on their laptops and desktops to prevent insiders from walking off with valuable information are now looking to blend those systems with gateway and data-at-rest DLP technologies and finding that integration with other systems is no easy trick, said Uzi Yair, chief executive of GTB Technologies, which markets all three types of the technology as individual products.

"The biggest problem that we hear people running into is the inability to enforce security policies consistently across the three different areas of DLP," Yair said.

"If you can't enforce the same policies across all of your systems, then it is almost impossible to make DLP work properly, which is why we're advocating the integrated approach today," Yair said. "If you don't allow credit card numbers to flow across the network, why would you let them be saved to a USB drive? But it does seem that some companies are having this issue."

Other industry watchers downplayed the problem and classified such device control applications as mere cousins of true DLP systems, but admitted that the problems may exist.

"People may have purchased these failsafe tools at the endpoint, and they address an aspect of DLP that involves device control and setting encryption at the endpoint. But that's not really DLP, it's not data-aware, it's more about controlling the periphery of the endpoint," said Devin Redmond, senior product manager of security products and strategy at vendor Websense.

Redmond said many DLP vendors, including Websense, have built APIs to mesh their products with those endpoint tools, and he noted that some of the perceived problems with the device control applications is that they cover such a small piece of the overall data security issue.

"A lot of people who made the move on those failsafes are finding that they won't address the bigger problem, that they don't get into the workflow of understanding the data on the device, which is what DLP is really all about," Redmond said. "Some may struggle to integrate those products with broader DLP technologies, but moving forward I think the trend will be more about understanding data and how it is used, versus simply the type of device that is being used."

Minority Report

Even those DLP players who are considered leaders in the space admit the market for their technologies is only just beginning to blossom.

Companies like Websense, and Vontu (which was acquired by security market leader Symantec for $350 million in Nov. 2007) are considered to have the most users of DLP technology today, and they only lay claim to several hundred customers apiece.