Jen English: reliable Data is the lifeblood of
every organization. It's what company leaders and
employees need to make decisions and solve
problems. Data is key to revenue, profits and
reputation. Several years ago, the magazine The
Economist declared that oil is no longer the
world's most valuable resource. Data is
unfortunately, data is more difficult to secure
than oil reserves are. I'm sure you've seen the
headlines, hackers seize a company's data and
demand a ransom for its return. Some disgruntled
employee infiltrates and corrupts their company's
data, a major retailer learns it systems were
broken into, and now customer credit card numbers
are up for sale on the dark web. The details of
these stories vary, but they teach the same
lesson, a company must keep its data secure. Data
breaches are expensive because they can force
downtime on a company, then there are possible
regulatory and legal fines. A data breach can also
damage your customers trust, and your
organization's good name. All of these can
undermine your organization's competitive
advantage, and worst case scenarios, a data breach
can lead to bankruptcy. Here we'll talk about the
threats tools and techniques you need to know
about to keep your business safe. For a deeper
dive, click the link above or in the description
below to explore our complete collection of all
things data security. Companies must prevent
unauthorized access to their data, and guard
against efforts to manipulate or corrupt data all
throughout the data lifecycle from creation to
destruction. insider threats are one of the
biggest threats to data security. An insider
threat might come from a current or former
employee or a third party partner or contractor.
The Insider might be malicious like a current or
former employee who uses their legitimate access
privileges to corrupt or steal sensitive data,
either to profit or to satisfy a grudge, but
unintentional insider threats are no less
dangerous. An innocent click on a link and a
phishing email could compromise a user's
credentials or unleash ransomware or other malware
on corporate systems. And user carelessness can
also result in accidental exposure of sensitive
data. This might look like an employee emailing
confidential information to the wrong person
uploading confidential information to an
unprotected Cloud account, or losing a company
laptop or other device without reporting it to it.
Then there's the challenge of technical
misconfigurations that accidentally exposed
confidential data sets. There are also third party
risks to consider. Your organization is only as
secure as its least secure third party partner
consider the infamous solar wind supply chain
attack. The attackers targeted the networks of
vendors customers, and supposedly vulnerable third
party software was partly to blame. Other data
security challenges include expanding data
footprints, inconsistent data, compliance laws,
and increasing and data longevity, and short data
security risks come in many different forms. The
ultimate goal of successful data security can be
summed up in the acronym C I A. C stands for data
confidentiality, or keeping data private. I stands
for data integrity, that is making sure the data
is complete and trustworthy. And A stands for
availability, ensuring those who need the data and
are authorized to use it have access to it. When
any of these three confidentiality, integrity or
availability are compromised, the company will
likely suffer in terms of reputation, or financial
health. So how can an organization keep its data
secure? The first step is to know what data you
need to protect. You can inventory data through a
process known as data discovery, which helps make
it easier to manage, store and secure the
information. There are four standard
classification categories for data, public
information, confidential information, sensitive
information, and personal information. Businesses
need to be particularly concerned about data
security for personal information. Examples of
personal data include personally identifiable
information, like social security numbers,
protected health information, such as patient
names or birth dates, electronic protected health
information, like medical records on a patient
portal, payment card industry or PCI data, such as
a credit card number, and intellectual property,
like product information. When doing the data
inventory, it's essential to keep in mind that
sensitive data can reside in many locations, on
premises in the cloud, and databases and on
devices. Data may also exist in three states of
being data in motion data at rest, and data in
use. data in motion means data that is being
transported like an email and transit. Data at
Rest refers to data that's stored or added
destination, that is data that's not being
transported or used. The third state is called
data in use, which sounds like what it is data
that has been written, updated or changed or
processed. Organizations need to take a defense in
depth approach to their data security strategy,
which means using a combination of tools,
techniques and policies, there are various data
security tools organizations can consider to keep
their data secure. One is data lifecycle
management, or D LM. A DLM tool uses automation to
apply established policies to data DLM products
ensure digital information stays accurate,
confidential, secure and available from the moment
it's created into the time it's no longer needed
and is destroyed. Patch management software is
another helpful data security aid because it keeps
data safe by detecting and fixing vulnerabilities,
the type of vulnerabilities that attackers love to
exploit, so they can steal or corrupt an
organization's data. analytics tools focus on user
behavior. These types of tools, often called user
behavior, analytics, or user and entity behavior
analytics work by flagging attempts to gain
unauthorized access. These tools can also alert
security teams when sensitive data is accessed an
unusually high number of times that can help
organizations detect things like lateral network
attacks, compromised user accounts, and insider
threats. But one of the most effective data
security tools is actually education, like a
security awareness training program. After all,
intentional and unintentional mistakes by staff,
contractors and partners pose one of the greatest
threats to data security. Some other effective
ways to secure data include encryption, data
masking, access control, data loss prevention, and
data backup. Let's look at these five in a bit
more detail. Encryption converts readable plain
text into unreadable ciphertext that's done using
an encryption algorithm or cipher. If encrypted
data is intercepted, it is useless because it
cannot be read or decrypted by anyone who does not
have the associated encryption key. Data Masking
obscures data so it can't be read. Mass data looks
like authentic data, but reveals no sensitive
information. Data can be masked through several
different techniques like scrambling or
substitution. Data encryption and data masking are
different approaches, but the end result is the
same. Both create data that is unreadable if
intercepted the third method. Access control means
controlling who has access to the data you want to
protect. Access control involves authentication
and authorization, or using processes and
techniques that ensure the users trying to access
the data are first who they say they are, and
second, authorized to use the data. Password
hygiene is important to good password hygiene
means setting policies that require a minimum
password length. So passwords can easily be
guessed, and require users to change that password
regularly. Data loss prevention or DLP is another
effective way to make data more secure. A DLP
platform is a tool that monitors and analyzes data
for anomalies and policy violations. It can
conduct data discovery, inventory and
classification, as well as analyze data to
determine if it's in motion, at rest or in use.
data backup the fifth on the list involves
creating copies of files and databases and storing
them in a secondary location. That way, if the
primary data fails, is corrupted or gets stolen,
the data backup ensures it can be returned to a
previous state rather than lost completely. These
five items encryption, masking, access control,
DLP and backup are just a few tools and techniques
to improve data security. But they're great places
to start. No matter how big or small. Every
organization needs a formal data security policy.
This policy will clarify and codify expectations
and responsibilities when it comes to securing
data. It will also help demonstrate compliance
with data privacy and security regulations. But
remember that well, rigorously following every
best practice I just outlined will help prevent a
data breach. You can't guarantee data security,
you have to be prepared for the worst. That's why
a data security strategy needs to be coupled with
a data breach response plan, a set of policies
that outline how if the worst happens, your
organization will manage the financial, legal and
reputational Fallout