Glossary
Data Exfiltration
Data exfiltration is the unauthorized removal of data from a system's controlled boundary, out to somewhere the organization's access controls no longer apply. The category is broader than the network-focused paths — an upload to an external service, a copied database — that most access-control design instinctively focuses on; a printed document walked out of a building, a screen photographed, or a screen-share left running are exfiltration through the exact same definition, just through a channel that a purely digital access-control system has no visibility into at all.
Access control that only reasons about digital transfer paths leaves these physical and quasi-physical channels entirely uncovered — closing them usually depends on policy and monitoring specific to the medium in question, like restricting or logging what leaves a system as printed output, rather than an extension of the same technical controls that govern network egress.