Data security is no longer a tick-box exercise that can be nonchalantly looked at. It has become a requirement for enterprises of all sizes, especially concerning the many demands of modern regulations and rising customer expectations. The notion of suffering a cyberattack has now moved from ‘if’ to ‘when’ and this puts all sensitive data in your organisation’s possession at severe risk. It’s therefore imperative to:
- Protect data at its earliest point
- Only deprotect when absolutely necessary
The good news: it’s not too late to give life to your data-centric security project and implement the necessary processes and procedures so that your business is compliant and, more importantly, your data is protected.
Data Security Road Blocks
The challenge many organisations face is that they lack an understanding of the type of data they have or where it is stored, who has access or how it is being leveraged. These stumbling blocks can have dangerous consequences for many business leaders who lack the basic knowledge of data security. Without a thorough understanding of data protection and security, organisations are unable to put in place the required policies that then sync with the businesses processes to effectively protect their data.
Balancing business needs and business risks is a good starting point and will lay out the necessary foundations for the data-centric security project. From here, investigate the questions above to gain a better idea of data security policies which will work best for the business.
Choosing the Right Data Protection Method
Then, once you have addressed the right policies and obtained the necessary knowledge, you can go to the market and begin investigating security solutions that not only protect the data (preferably by encryption or tokenisation) but also allow for access to deprotected data based on predetermined user rights that allow access to sensitive data on a strictly need to know basis.
From here, you have the power to orchestrate the policies across the entire business including systems, applications and products. A key element to the success of any data-centric security project is adaptability. With the business landscape continually evolving and the cyber environment being highly volatile, having a data-centric security solution that can adapt to these changes is essential for maintaining an advantage, not only over your competitors, but also over cybercriminals.
