Data security refers to your policies and standards for protecting your data – on your network, in your infrastructure and applications, and at multiple layers. Data safety methods span on-premises and cloud environments and comprise encryption, masking, tokenization, deletion, authentication, access control, backup and recovery, and data resiliency. Security also involves the demands related to compliance, motivated by government regulations or industry standards, such as PCI or HIPAA.
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The Importance of Data Security
According to a current Verizon report, one in eight security breaches is financially motivated, creating financial turmoil for victims. A data break can cause just as much disruption as non-compliance. Without a robust data security strategy, you could risk public relations fallout, penalties for non-compliance, and lost productivity. Some of the expected consequences of a data breach are as follows:
Public Relations Implications
Online consumer expectations are on the rise. Therefore, when potential clients or investors learn that your organization has been breached, you are considered reckless and unreliable, even if you did everything you were supposed to do. This perception could cause the loss of market share and even affect the price of its shares. The effort and cost of remediating the initial breach, managing the media, communicating with customers, and rebuilding your brand take resources away from your core mission.
Sanctions For Non-Compliance
Failure to comply with regulatory and legal requirements around retention, permitting and storage can lead to significant non-compliance fines. First and foremost, those fines are sanctions from the regulatory board. On top of that, there may be associate fees, such as direct payments to victims of violations, provision of resolution services (credit monitoring or identity protection), or claims for damages.
Productivity Losses
After a data breach, IT teams need to drop whatever they’re doing to respond and resolve the threat. If data loss occurs, time is spent restoring backups. A security breach will likely affect some employees’ ability to access and use the data they need to complete their jobs. In a recent study conducted by CISCO, 48% of companies with more than 10,000 employees experienced at least four hours of downtime from a data breach, and a third experienced up to 16 hours of downtime.
Types of Data Security Technology
Protecting data in the mist or on-premises will involve using one or more of the following technologies:
- Data Encryption
- data masking
- Tokenization
- data deletion
- Authentication
- Access control
- Backups and recovery
- data resiliency
Data Encryption
It encryption averts unauthorized users from accessing data. This technique requires authorization or a key to decrypt and view or edit the data. Encryption is primarily applied at the network and infrastructure level; however, physical assets, flash drives, or hard drives can also use this data security method. Additionally, encryption can be applied within applications. For example:
- Original data: John Smith
- Coded: 393938383838
- Decoded: John Smith
- Lock status: locked, can be unlock
- Access – End users can access the entire dataset
Data Masking
When data is masked, all or part of the data is replace. We often see this when displaying credit card numbers or social security numbers. The information is there, but you can’t access it. This technique is used for situations where data is stored in the system, but users cannot see the actual data due to compliance issues, such as PCI or HIPAA. Masking cannot be reverse. Once the data is masked, it loses its value and is not available for use in any other functions. For example:
- Original data: John Smith
- Masked : 393938383838
- Not masked : n/a
- Lock status : locked, can’t unlock
Tokenization
While it’s crucial to harness the value of all data, certain data elements, such as personally identifiable information (PII), medical details, and financial information, want to be handle with particular care. Tokenization lets organizations hide sensitive information but retain its importance. Unlike encryption, where data can be unlock, masked, and loses value, tokenization cannot be open, but its features are still valuable. For example, you may not know each customer’s name and address. Still, you can mine data to determine, for example, when customers in a particular region spend the most on a particular item.
- Original data: John Smith
- Tokenized: 838383838
- Not deleted : n/a
- Lock status : locked, can’t unlock
- Access – End users can access information about the data, but not the actual set of data
Data Deletion
Due to the rise in privacy defence regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA, businesses need to protect the data they receive and have a process to delete the data. Unfortunately, disorganized data cleansing and sloppy adherence to data governance can make it impossible for some organizations to comply with data deletion requests fully. They do not have good management in all the places where data points. Data could be host. When done correctly, data deletion works like this:
- Original data: John Smith
- Deleted : [no data]
- Not deleted : n/a
- Access: the data is non-existent. The end-user never saw the data existed.
Authentication
Authentication remains the process through which users identify themselves and can access information. For some systems, it is a password; for others, it may be a biometric indicator, such as fingerprints or facial scanning. Authentication unlocks locked data for use through authorized parties. It applies at the network, application, or file level.
Access Control
Organizations can control which users see which data by establishing user groups and also, role-based access methods. It ensures that employees who need to view sensitive data are appropriately authorized. Access control is set in most data compliance regulations to prevent, for example, a receptionist in a doctor’s office from seeing a patient’s entire medical record, rather than just the insurance information that is need to register and schedule patients.
Backups and Recovery
Backup and also, recovery refer to how you store data and how you will restore it in the event of an incident. Like consumer-grade services that protect you if you mistakenly delete a file or lose your phone, enterprise-grade backup means separating data into secure places to provide redundancy. If one location fails, the other location wakes up with an exact data image. Organizations use the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) metrics to determine what data is recover and how long it takes to recover.
Data Resiliency
Data resiliency refers to how quickly you can recover and also, restore operations in the event of a data breach. It was achieve by deploying multiple servers in different locations in the past. However, after the recent global crisis, many organizations are face with data centres that they cannot access. For this reason, they consider cloud-based alternatives that can be manage remotely, have automatic failover, and don’t require significant upfront capital investments.
The Benefits of Data Security
Maintaining a defined data security plan protects the entire organization. Small businesses that experience violations often go out of business within a year and also, spend an average of $200,000. And for those in the aftermath of a data breach, there will be a huge financial hole around the increased resources and staffing it took to recover from a technology and also, business perspective.
With a firm data security policy, organizations build trust, save resources, and avoid disrupting business by having to handle a breach or outage.
Conclusion
Security is protection from, or resilience against, the potential harm caused by others by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries of security may remain persons and also, social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change.