The trend is behind a growing need for tools that help companies monitor, detect and audit all activity going on inside networks, databases and applications, he said.

One such tool from Reconnex Corp. has been helping Sirva Inc., a Westmont, Ill.-based provider of relocation services with more than 7,000 employees worldwide, keep tabs on its intellectual property and other sensitive data while the company goes through a series of divestitures.

"One of the things that happens after a divestiture is that people take the stuff they are working on to their new companies," and Sirva needed a way to prevent that, said Chuck Shmayel, vice president of infrastructure and security at the company. Reconnex's appliance sits at Sirva's network-egress points in each of its four data centers and monitors traffic to ensure that confidential information doesn't exit its networks, either by accident or design.

"As a relocation service, we handle a lot of confidential information on behalf of our customers, and we want to make sure it's protected," he said.

Implementing specific controls for monitoring what's flowing out of enterprise networks can go a long way towards mitigating accidental and deliberate data leaks, said Mark Moroses, senior director of technical services at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.