Information security is a top concern of all organizations. According to IBM, 83% of CISOs say that the challenge posed by external threats has increased in the last three years. They worry about the legal and financial risks associated with data loss, privacy breaches and not complying with regulations. Daily stories in the news show examples of organizations that failed to implement sufficient security measures to protect themselves from hackers and authorized internal people stealing or taking confidential information. Cyber crime is big business and has run amok.
In recent years, leaked emails have caused stocks to fall, stolen credit card numbers have resulted in financial disaster and loss of brand equity, stolen trade secrets have resulted in criminal charges and accidental posting of information has resulted in the loss of valuable intellectual property. As these security breaches become more common, consumers demand protection and governments respond with regulations.
In the past, organizations relied on perimeter-based security to protect their information. They erected barriers around their information, such as firewalls, VPNs, web filtering, and intrusion detection systems. With all this security in place, why does information still leak?
While these systems are necessary and help, they do not address the root cause of the problem. They don’t secure information but rather protect points of a system – the network, a server, laptops, and mobile devices. They do little to protect confidentiality and the integrity of information.
Organizations need data-centric security to protect the content that is so vital to their business. Since content is not static, an organization needs a solution that protects it no matter where it is. Content is in constant motion, traversing resources and perimeters. A document seldom resides on a single device. People download information from databases into spreadsheets and send them throughout an organization. They create reports in Word and save them as PDFs. They copy files to servers, put them in document repositories and print them for review or distribution. They email them outside an organization or put them into cloud-based services. Data-centric solutions account for the dynamic nature of information and secure it throughout its lifecycle, regardless of where it resides or its format.
If you are worried about your data, you need to protect your data. Take a hard look at your data security and be proactive about protecting your most valuable assets and your business. Servers and user devices are commodities. Your data is not.
Photo credit Sarah Joy
