Traditionally organizations have focused IT security primarily on perimeter defense, building walls to block external threats from entering the network. While this is still important, it is not enough. Cybercriminals regularly breach perimeter defenses and data frequently lives outside those defenses in the cloud elsewhere, so organizations need to apply a data-centric security strategy that protects data wherever it is. With today’s proliferation of data, evolving global and regional privacy regulations, growth of cloud adoption, and advanced persistent threats, data-centric security enables organizations to be in control of their data regardless of location while rendering it unreadable to data thieves. But, to be effective, this protection must happen automatically without relying on user intervention. This white paper outlines the challenges of data security in this age of data proliferation. It also provides strategies to discover and classify your critical data and apply data-centric security to it.