Gartner projects that by 2024, 30% of enterprises will have adopted Data Security Platforms, up from less than 5% in 2019.
The move to a hybrid workplace left security teams scrambling to deploy new point solutions, adding to an existing array of data protection tools.
Today, the number of separate tools in your arsenal may span data discovery, classification, DLP, EDRM, EPP, and CASB.
This patchwork approach and silo-specific security controls add operational complexity that you need to get under control. What’s the best way to address this challenge?
Map out a strategy that consolidates data-centric tools into a Data Security Platform (DSP). Here’s Fasoo’s take on why this should be one of your top priorities in 2023 and how to move forward.
Data Security Isn’t Getting Easier
The variety and volume of sensitive data in your organization are growing and the need to process and share information is accelerating. The pace is disrupting traditional business and security processes leaving digital assets exposed to new threats more than ever.
With this unrelenting pace and complexity, there’s never enough time for you to evaluate new tools. Analysts report that implementing a new data security product takes one year or longer and eventually delivers only part of what you envisioned.
Inevitably, gaps and overlapping capabilities are fielded that complicate daily operations like:
Managing rule sets in disparate tools independently fosters inconsistent policies leaving gaps that expose data to breaches.
Multiple consoles and alert tools create operational complexity and often overwhelm the team’s ability to administer and respond in a timely fashion.
Implementing vendor upgrades to multiple point solutions disrupts operations and increases the overall total cost of ownership.
Data Security Platforms
Your peers are looking to DSPs to overcome these challenges. Within the next 18 months, Gartner predicts over 30% of enterprises are expected to adopt DSPs.
Gartner defines DSPs “as products and services characterized by data security offerings that target the integration of the unique protection requirements of data across data types, storage silos, and ecosystems.” In addition to making data security easier, they point to better utilization and increased data value.
Gartner recommends you start by building a multi-year migration plan from siloed data security offerings to DSPs enabling simpler, consistent end-to-end data security. In doing so:
Start consolidation where it makes sense in an area that’s already in need of an upgrade to address security gaps. Make consolidation part of that upgrade.
Take steps to consolidate. Select a subset of already adjacent technologies to form purpose-built DSPs that solve today’s immediate issues.
Consolidate Data-Centric Tools Now
You’ve likely deployed data loss prevention tools and are experiencing the challenges mentioned previously. And now the hybrid workplace creates new challenges to secure sensitive content including insider threats, third-party collaboration, multi-cloud environments, and BYOD endpoints.
This all makes data-centric tools a prime candidate for DSP consolidation.
Modern DSPs have evolved to address the challenges of today’s hybrid workplace, overcoming traditional solution shortfalls.
A confluence of adjacent technologies, like data classification and insider risk management, may either be in place or on your list for evaluation.
Don’t be left behind. Start your migration planning to DSPs now and move forward in 2023. Consider these five key DSP data-centric capabilities as a start. And learn more about Fasoo’s purpose-built, Zero Trust Data Security Platform that delivers these capabilities and much more.
Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions focus on the movement of sensitive data. They analyze document content and user behavior patterns and can restrict the movement of information based on preset criteria. With the move to remote work, traditional DLP solutions can’t safeguard sensitive data since it’s difficult to monitor all the locations users can send and store documents.
While DLP is good at finding sensitive data in files, it can’t control access to the data inside. Once a user has access, they can copy and paste the data anywhere. If someone shares a sensitive document with a business partner or customer, DLP has no visibility to that document and can’t control access to it.
Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM) focuses on protecting sensitive data in documents. It automatically encrypts files and controls file access privileges dynamically at rest, in use, and in motion. It provides visibility and control regardless of where the document travels.
Four ways EDRM enhances DLP
1. Protects Sensitive Data Wherever It Travels
DLP is a perimeter-based solution that stops the movement of data. By blocking ingress and egress points, you can stop users from copying sensitive documents to a USB drive, a collaboration solution, or the cloud. This presents challenges as security teams try to block all the locations a document can go. With many people working from home and using personal devices (BYOD), this is becoming almost unmanageable.
EDRM takes a file-centric approach to security. It applies encryption, access control, and document usage rights that travel with the file everywhere. Controls are always enforced regardless of location or device. You know your sensitive data is safe even if users access files on new devices or share data with customers, partners, and other third parties.
2. Enforces Consistent Controls Across Cloud Environments
You probably have numerous perimeter security solutions across your internal networks, cloud services, and endpoints. This creates inconsistent policies that leave security and privacy gaps. Gartner projects that “through 2025, more than 99% of cloud breaches will have a root cause of preventable misconfigurations or mistakes by end-users.”
With EDRM you set safeguards centrally and retain ultimate control over who can access the data and how. Cloud administrators and end-users can’t remove the protections which remain with the file no matter where the data resides or who accesses it. This simplifies your security controls and eliminates a major reason for a data breach in today’s multi-cloud environment.
3. Controls Data-In-Use to Minimize Risk from Insider Threats
Once a verified user gains access to a file, that sensitive corporate data can go anywhere. Users can copy, cut, and paste sensitive data into new file formats, share it in collaboration applications, and store and print sensitive files on personal devices. Someone may not be malicious but accidentally may share sensitive data. How many times have you accidentally emailed a file to the wrong person?
EDRM can apply a broad range of file permissions to control data-in-use. If a user only needs to read a document, you can prevent them from sharing or printing it. If that user needs to edit the file, you can change permissions and allow them to edit, but restrict copying the data to an email or other insecure location. Controlling what a user can do when a file is open stops data breaches by insiders in today’s world of leavers and joiners.
Visibility is lost in today’s hybrid workplace because users can store and access data on just about any device and in any location, many not in your control. Traditional DLP and network tools create a patchwork approach to data visibility with some organizations employing over 40 IT and security tools to trace sensitive data.
Advanced EDRM solutions use a file-centric approach to embed a unique ID in each file. It makes the file self-reporting, logging all access and actions taken on the file. This also applies to copies and derivatives, like PDFs. The file is “never lost” and is constantly monitored providing essential feedback for adaptive control and access decisions.
EDRM Makes DLP Stronger
By adding EDRM, you can protect your sensitive data regardless of its location and control that all important data in use. This is critical to stop both malicious and accidental insider threats. It lets you sleep at night knowing that your sensitive data is protected, controlled, and monitored at all times.
Remote work is putting sensitive data at risk. That we can all agree on. Traditional endpoint protection frequently fails. So what about stronger surveillance of remote employees at home?
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Let’s monitor the heck out of them, shall we?
That seems to be the approach of some financial services firms whose remote workers handle sensitive financial data and Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Is remote work surveillance a good idea?
Perhaps, if your organization is craving attention – from the Washington Post, for example – for all the wrong reasons: privacy concerns, lawsuits, alienated employees and contractors.
“Excessive surveillance,” writes ZD Net’s Owen Hughes, “is having profoundly negative effects on the workforce.”
But does it work?
Why monitor employees at home?
You see, that’s the other catch: it may not be worth the effort and expenses. Digital surveillance, warns Tech Target’s ComputerWeekly (UK), may “increase enterprise risk” by “forcing remote workers towards shadow IT.”
In short, excessive work-from-home surveillance doesn’t only erode trust and productivity. It also results in weaker data protection and employees leaving for the competition.
What’s not to love? Perhaps you agree: pretty much everything, if you value your employees and work culture.
The tips below favor a non-creepy approach that is more sustainable:
5 data protection tips for maintaining trust in the Zero Trust era
Fasoo’s data-centric security model maximizes document protection – not the surveillance of the people handling them from home. Fasoo enables IT to secure and keep tabs on sensitive unstructured data throughout the document lifecycle, instead of putting employees and contractors under home office surveillance.
Stay vigilant; keep watching.
Fasoo Enterprise DRM lets your organization automatically assign file protection without user intervention at the point of creation. Encryption and policies keep the document secured even when it is shared outside the organization by mistake.
Efficient document protection with Fasoo enables your organization to continuously monitor, log, and flexibly change who’s accessing confidential files and how.
Turn your employees’ bedroom nooks into secure print stations.
What would it take, aside from nationwide lease, maintenance, and insurance contracts? The kids giving up their bedroom? A two-camera surveillance system?
Or, less creepy: You deploy Fasoo Smart Print as your organization’s remote network of monitored print stations. Regardless of which physical or virtual printer is used – including the old inkjet in the bedroom nook – IT remains fully in control.
A granular audit trail includes the text or image of the actual printed content. It ensures visibility into all print activities that involve EDRM-secured documents.
Intervene when they take a snapshot.
How do you keep remote employees, in the privacy of their home, from using the Print Screen key, screenshots, or a smartphone to take pictures of confidential information?
Install more spyware and observation cameras? Think about the possible impact on your workforce retention rate in the “great resignation” era.
Here’s a less heavy-handed approach that’s more efficient than excessive remote work surveillance. Deploy Smart Screen, Fasoo’s on-screen document protection. It enables IT to block and monitor screen capture attempts. Administrators can monitor all screen capture attempts and even view an image of the targeted areas.
It may be impossible to keep a determined person from taking photos with a smartphone or camera outside a high-security office area or designated data room. That’s why effective deterrence is essential. Fasoo Smart Screen enables admins to imprint sensitive documents with a visible “smart” watermark that contains tell-tale user-specific information.
Keep tabs on them outside work and after hours.
On your files, that is. Shareholders, customers, and regulators expect you to protect confidential financial information and PII throughout the document lifecycle. Password-based document protection or Data Loss Protection (DLP) solutions, for example, cannot provide this level of security.
DLP aims to prevent data exfiltration, but files can still make it beyond your organization’s IT perimeter: on a USB stick, for instance, or via a personal cloud storage account.
With Fasoo Enterprise DRM, encryption and policy settings apply regardless of where the document lands and prevent unauthorized access. A confidential file remains protected even in the wrong hands.
Always and immediately involve higher-ups, IT, and HR…
…when (former) employees attempt to access specific documents. Sounds ridiculous, right?
Well, that’s because it is. Yet, some Information Rights Management (IRM) solutions expect data owners to relinquish control over individual documents to a degree that poses challenges for organizations with many users and constantly changing roles.
Workflows become work trickles. People find shortcuts. Overall data security suffers.
Fasoo’s centralized policy management capabilities allow for flexible, people-centric exception handling. It integrates with all leading federated authentication systems, minimizing risk when employees change departments or leave the company.
This approach ensures that everyone who needs to be is in the loop about a file’s security – the document creator, supervisors, IT, and HR. No home office surveillance required.
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Zero Trust makes sense. Until it doesn’t.
Would you make Zero Trust your People & Culture or HR slogan? Let’s face it: You need a Zero Trust strategy to secure your data. As a tagline for your work culture, on the other hand, it would be a less than ideal pick.
With Fasoo Enterprise DRM, you don’t have to sacrifice trust and productivity by setting up remote work surveillance bridgeheads in your employees’ homes.
As a cornerstone of your Zero Trust strategy, Fasoo empowers your organization to maintain its work culture and trust within the team while still ensuring maximum data protection.
How to stop intellectual property leakage and theft in manufacturing?
That was the topic of a discussion hosted by Fasoo at the 2021 Apex Assembly Tech Leaders Northeast Summit. CTO Ron Arden spoke with Hillary Fehr, Senior Cyber Security Researcher with GE Gas Power, and Chris Babie, Staff Cyber Security Researcher with GE Gas Power, about the challenges of IP protection in the manufacturing enterprise.
In Part 1 of this conversation, IP Protection: “We need a tool with a wider scope”, we focused on how to protect sensitive CAD files, 3D-PDFs and other PDF file formats, in addition to the wide variety of Microsoft Office and other documents typically found in innovation-driven manufacturing companies.
In this post, Ron, Hillary and Chris zoom in on additional insider threats and risks introduced through the rise of the cloud and the rapid shift to work-from-home due to COVID-19.
What advice do the GE security researchers have for IT leaders in manufacturing companies looking to update their document protection program? Find out in Part 2 of the conversation:
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Ron Arden: With everybody being remote, all of a sudden new threat vectors are appearing. There are things you didn’t even think about before. Somebody is going to copy something to their private OneDrive or their Dropbox account because it’s convenient. It’s easy to move stuff around. We all used to copy things to our USB drives, but now it’s just as easy to go to a cloud service. You know employees are just working along, and they’re not really worried about all of this.
Chris Babie: Exactly. Most of it is amiss on our [the IT security] side. If we told [engineers] the proper running rules, they wouldn’t perform that risky activity. People want to back up their data. Right now, there’s no help desk for them. I think people don’t want their productivity to dip. That’s a perfect example of the “I need to make sure my data is safe, hey, let me move it to my desktop” kind of thing. We need an answer for that now.
“A ton of new risk has bubbled up”
Hillary Fehr: And engineering machines, which typically were in a lab environment in the business before, now are in somebody’s home. That’s a whole other layer of risk that was never there.
Chris Babie: We kind of knew that our “walls” in the manufacturing environment were okay. Now you’re worried about “does a virus now get on that machine?”, “is the home network protected?” It’s not even a data protection issue alone anymore. It’s also a home networking issue. A ton of new risk has bubbled up.
Ron Arden: Chris, what was your experience with other solutions that you use to protect and control sensitive documents?
Chris Babie: I think one thing that every solution struggles with in our world is scale. If you think about 300,000 folks, millions of transactions every single day, all these different mediums for transacting data. We already touched on the complex file types [see Part 1, IP Protection: “We need a tool with a wider scope”].
Our value is not driven by the standard stuff. It’s more in part files, CAD drawings. We were finding certain populations really love mobile. That’s just how they work. They’re very busy, they’re traveling, and it would work great on the endpoint. And then it would fall down.
We cover all these different complex workflows. Finding a solution that works everywhere is very challenging. It worked well when it was a standard workflow, very cookie-cutter. But we don’t do cookie-cutter at GE.
I talked about our vast network. I need a solution that works if it gets sent to an organization with 500,000 people and a supplier with three folks, and they’re more of like a mom-and-pop shop. We have a whole spectrum. We kind of cover everything, in terms of file types, network entity types…
How do you find something that works everywhere? It’s a challenge.
Wanted: IP protection that “works everywhere”
Hillary Fehr: It’s got to be adaptable, especially with business requirements and environments. We know how quickly those can change. Last year was a big indicator of your ability to really pivot and adjust your priorities and approach, based on new risks that come up in the business.
Chris Babie: We touched on user experience. That’s literally everything —the main bucket. If the user experience wasn’t there… – people do not like change. They just don’t.
We need to make sure that however they are working today, the technology works. That’s getting really hard to find with all these new solutions, cloud storage… It’s critical if we’re going to bring anything in-house.
Ron Arden: As you said, we all hate change. If we initiate the change, that’s different, but when the change is brought down on us – no. You got a job to do. The person who is creating the next generation of turbines has to focus on that. They cannot waste their time learning a new tool and completely changing their workflow.
And like you said, Chris: If you go out to GE’s smaller suppliers, they work the way they work. I mean, you might be able to impose some things on them. Still, they want to work the way they want to work. Mobile is extremely important today. Working with a flexible solution is key.
Adaptability is key, because the tool should adapt to you. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to adapt to the tool because that never works. People just get annoyed, and they don’t use it.
I’d like to wrap up with one last item. Hillary, what advice would you give to people listening in?
Hillary Fehr: I would say you need to know where your data is. You need to have a strong process for identifying your data, tracking it, understanding the movement, how that data is used.
Until you have that, you really don’t know where you have sensitive data and how to protect it. Once you have a good understanding of what that data movement looks like and where that data is, you can start to build your approach to data protection.
Data protection is about auditability, too
Like we mentioned before, it’s also important to listen to the business because things are changing all the time. So you need to understand the business processes and be adaptable as they change and as the business priorities change.
You need to have standards and best practices in place. Not only to outline the do’s and don’ts for your end users, but also from an auditability perspective. It gives you legs to stand on.
Ron Arden: Chris, your advice?
Chris Babie: We touched on it – communication and education. In the insider threat space, we wouldn’t see a dominant portion of the [insider threat] activity if we were simply upfront with them on how people are supposed to work, and how data is supposed to transact.
To anyone implementing a solution, I would say: Try to get really close to the business. Do you understand all the different use cases you’re going to encounter?
At least in our world, there’s all this function overlap. If you’re going to implement anything, it cannot be in a silo. There needs to be a major partnership with the business. Everyone has to have a seat at the table before we go in any direction.
Hillary Fehr: That’s a good point, Chris. I think relationship management is a big part of getting their buy-in, too, and building out your process – because your data owners are the ones that understand your data and can help you to identify the best approach to protecting it.
Chris Babie: Having some of these basic “101” items – assets inventory, knowing your environment – gives you a head start, especially at our scale. It can be very challenging, as you can imagine.
Hillary Fehr: You have churn of employees and contractors, and people who may have known where the data was – years ago – are no longer with the company. That’s where you need to partner with the business and the functional areas to get to the heart of where things are and what they do with them.
Ron Arden: In essence, what you’ve been saying is that you need a solution that is location agnostic, because you have a lot of systems. Some would be legacy; some might be brand new. In the cloud, on people’s phones, home devices, engineering workstations…
So you can’t rely on a perimeter. There’s no perimeter anymore. It’s everywhere. I’m guessing you probably even have storage assets that you don’t even know about because somebody put a server somewhere in a room and nobody remembers what’s there, and then all of a sudden you find out something of value is sitting on that device.
Hillary Fehr: Or an endpoint in their bottom drawer of their desk.
Chris Babie (chuckles): I can confirm that our data is everywhere. Most organizations need to shift towards that [location agnostic] model. There’s zero perimeter today. Our data is all over the world, in every system imaginable. How do we make sure it’s protected wherever it goes?
“Shift towards location-agnostic model” of data protection
Ron Arden: We have some customers with scenarios where they have to feed the data to machines. Those systems tend to be older, because of the cost of those types of machines. So you might even have a Windows XP machine that’s connected to one of these devices with important process information on it.
It’s sensitive information. If you’ve got a contractor or a person who just ups and leaves the business and says, “Hey, this might be really cool for me to take to my next company,” you’re never going to know that, and something very important walks out of the door.
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Do the scenarios mentioned in this conversation sound familiar? Most innovation-driven manufacturing companies face similar challenges, due to remote work demands under COVID. This explains why manufacturers increasingly rely on a file-centric approach to protecting intellectual property.
Fasoo Enterprise DRM comes with centralized policy management and granular controls baked in that can be adjusted flexibly by the data owner. This approach enables large organizations to provide maximum protection – across the enterprise and its supply chain – against insider threats and IP exfiltration at scale, while maintaining workflows and productivity.
Watch Ron Arden’s complete Apex Summit Fireside Chat with GE Gas Power’s Hillary Fehr and Chris Babie here.
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The transcript of this conversation has been shortened and edited for clarity and the blog format.
The month of October was very busy for Fasoo as we were all over the US talking to people about data-centric security and how it is the best solution to protect your sensitive information from insider threats and external hackers (APTs).
We started the month by attending the Rochester Security Summit in Rochester, NY. This two-day event brought together executives and technical staff from numerous organizations in the Rochester area to share intelligence on how to protect their businesses from cyber attacks. Fasoo was part of a vendor pavilion with our partner Brite Computers showing attendees how to protect data localized from databases, files downloaded from content management systems and those shared through the cloud and on mobile devices. Ron Arden, Vice President – North America, presented to a packed room on “Closing the Threat Gap: A 21st Century Approach to Minimizing Risk” as part of the Threat Landscape track at the event.
The following week saw Fasoo sponsoring an executive luncheon on The Internet of Things (IoT) at the Nasdaq Marketsite in New York City. The event was put on by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). Bill Blake, President – North America, and Ron Arden got to participate in the luncheon and spoke to the numerous executives and government officials. We were even part of the closing bell ceremony; look for us around 1:00 into the video. With all the interest in IoT devices and the tremendous data that each will generate, Fasoo was educating people on how to protect the information collected and ensure that PII, PHI and other personal data is protected.
We finished the month in Las Vegas at the IBM Insight 2015 conference. Fasoo was a Silver Plus Sponsor, so we had a booth right in the middle of all the action. Security and analytics were big focuses of the conference this year as many organizations are trying to understand where they have sensitive information (the crown jewels) and how best to protect it from internal and external threats.
Bill Blake, Ron Arden and National Account Manager Alper Kizar were all in Vegas talking to customers, IBM staff and generally enjoying the warm weather. Bill presented “Closing the Threat Gap: A 21st Century Approach to Minimizing Risk” to an enthusiastic audience at the Expo Theater. Our partners Dayhuff and Neocol joined us in the booth and throughout the conference as many attendees were talking about securing the mountains of unstructured data in their companies. Of course Vegas would not be complete without some fun, so Dayhuff held its annual get together at the Ri Ra Irish Pub. The Irish definitely make some great beer and it was great to unwind with everyone after a long day at the conference.
During the different events, I heard a lot of recurring themes from attendees, vendors, speakers and security professionals. I think they show the challenges CISOs, CIOs and other executives face as they try to move their businesses forward in an ever changing security landscape. Here are a few of them.
Corporations do not have perimeters anymore
Security is everybody’s job
Monitoring data is hard, it’s like dust, it’s everywhere
Users are very naive about security and need to be educated
More than half of all data breaches are caused by human error
When you increase where the data is, it increases the risk
Being compliant doesn’t mean you are secure
Fasoo has the best approach to address each of these points through strong file encryption and persistent security policies that travel with the data. Access to sensitive data is controlled through good identity management that ensures your sensitive data is protected and controlled regardless of location or device. Working with existing applications and workflows makes it very easy for users to apply security to files, since they don’t have to think about it. Automatic security policies apply the right level of access control as soon as someone creates a file. This makes it easy to control unstructured data, whether it’s created locally or downloaded from an existing information system.
Check out some of the pictures from our busy October as the weather turns colder and the end of the year is in sight. Hopefully we can help you create a secure work environment by protecting your most sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands.
Earlier this month, an article recorded that data breaches in 2015 are on pace to break records both in the number of breaches and records exposed. In 2014, the numbers of US data breaches tracked by the Identity Theft Resource Center hit a record high of 783, with about 86 million confirmed records exposed. So far this year, as of June 30, the number of breaches reached 400 and additionally, about 118 million records had been confirmed to be at risk.
We all have heard about the government data breaches that have reached the headlines but in addition to those, some other major data breaches which have exposed more than 92,000 people’s personal information are three separate organizations in very different industries. Florida’s Orlando Health, California’s Cuesta College and Michigan’s Firekeepers Casino recently acknowledged data breaches.
Orlando’s Health announced on July 2, 2015 that approximately 3,200 patients’ personal records were exposed by a former employee. The data included names, birthdates, addresses, medications, medical tests, test results and other clinical data. This wasn’t the first time as back in January 2014 a flash drive was misplaced that contained and exposed 586 children’s data, and also the theft of patient records by a former medical assistant in February 2013.
Cuesta College announced on May 31, that a college human resources analyst on medical leave allegedly downloaded reports containing approximately 4,000 current and previous employees’ personal information, then emailed the reports to a personal email address.
Lastly, Michigan’s Firekeepers Casino, announced on July 3, 2015 that approximately 85,000 credit and debit cards used between September 7, 2014 and April 25, 2015. They also discovered that there may have been unauthorized access to a file storage server, which holds customers’ social security numbers and/or driver license numbers, as well as current and former employees’ social security numbers, health benefit selection and medical billing information.
The stories are the same and what we have continued to see is that none of the information/data had been encrypted. Even with all the articles and advice that not only security companies are saying but reporters in this area have also continued to say data needs to be protected. Now the government especially state governments are taking the stance to make sure that your organizations that hold/store customers’ personally identifiable information are required to secure them by “encrypting them or by any other method or technology that renders the personal information unreadable or unusable.”
By encrypting this data and applying granular permissions to them automatically, personally identifiable information, intellectual property and other sensitive information can remain protected. With data-centric security, whether it is a malicious or unintentional insider such as a current or former employee or an outside hacker who has gained access to your file storage server, you data is protected no matter where it goes.
I don’t know how much more we can continue talking about healthcare data breaches. This is again a multi week of data breaches in the healthcare industry, and again over and over. With Anthem Inc. and then again with Premera Blue Cross, and Advantage Dental, all announced they had data breaches, however nothing about if there data was encrypted.
How can 80 million and then 11 million then finally 150,000 patient records all in a month or so get exposed? Have we become so sure that we will not be a target to hackers and insider threats? The question now is not if, but when will a data breach happen. This is even more common in the healthcare industry.
Just by looking through the list of blogs that we have written alone, covers a lot about how we can help the healthcare industry protect PHI against being exposed. This is not only against outside attacks, but also to malicious and accidental insider threats. What is the reason behind this? The reason is that we protect the data itself, no matter where it is.
In addition, many states are very close to imposing regulations and laws to protect patient health information. They will also penalize organization that deal with this information and do not have the proper protection against such attacks.
It’s time to also not focus on the perimeter as for the past couple years, that perimeter can no longer be defined as it has become so wide. Meeting the proper steps to protect sensitive information of this nature must currently be paramount to all healthcare organizations.
Making sure that data is DRM protected, as this can prevent hackers from accessing the data even after the data has been stolen.
Remember the new threat even now is that your data is under attack. Even at this very moment it could be with all the recent APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) attacks. Don’t ignore the threat as it has become very real at a big scale.
Insider threats still remain to be a higher concern for business not only in the United States, but around the world. Businesses are more than ever expected to maintain or increase their data security and data protection budgets to mitigate the risk of insider threats. When we look at business today, more than 93% of U.S. respondents to a survey say the feel vulnerable to insider attacks. There is no doubt that those that come from within in a business pose the most threats.
Nowadays, preventing data breaches have become the one of the highest priority for IT security spending and based on recent headlines, the cloud and databases are the most at risk. Unfortunately, it is only until after an organization experiences a data breach or fails a compliance audit, do organizations “play catch-up” to secure the their sensitive data. Privileged users still remain the greatest threat, but contractors and service provide, along with business partners still pose a threat within the inside. Whether it is malicious or unintentional, the fact that sensitive information remains unprotected even with all these headlines is beyond any consumer’s guess.
Some of you may think, our perimeter defenses is strong, we don’t have to worry about data breaches. In this case, they won’t stop an insider attack from happening. Insiders have two major things that make them more dangerous than an outsider. Insiders already have network access, sometimes at a high level. They also know much of what is on the network as well as where.
To truly combat the insider threat, a much more persistent and complete approach to security is needed. As always mentioned, it is not so much about the user or the perimeter as it is about the data itself. Any data that is protected by Fasoo Enterprise DRM (Digital Rights Management) can provide that security both against insider threats and external hackers. The reason here, is as mentioned, Fasoo protects the data itself no matter where it goes. Whether it is malicious or accidental, insider threats continue to make the headlines each month, and we cannot sit back and let these incidents continue to happen.
With you data DRM protected, and secure with the right security against data breaches, organizations can take a stand and say enough is enough. Keep your data secure with Fasoo Enterprise DRM.
The answer? Data Protection! Although compliance has always topped data breach protection, this year, preventing data breaches and protecting intellectual property are all considered more important in driving data protection. However, it is both of these together that makes a data breach protection solution so robust.
Meeting and demonstrating compliance is the start to a more secure organization. Last year in particular with the spike in data breaches caused by the theft or loss of sensitive information pushed the government to push for numerous legislative requirements and standards-based protocols from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).
Federal government agencies are required to follow endpoint security obligations and protocols and even more so with national security agencies who communicate classified information.
The security challenge for organizations can be seen in two ways: Threats can come externally or internally from within the organization. Data leaks and network instability can have disastrous consequences, regardless of their source. As a result, security can be implemented to block entry of unauthorized users and prohibit the exit of confidential data, among other things. However, the more important and sure way of protecting your data is to protect the data itself.
Whether we are dealing with insider threats or external hackers, even if they steal the files that contain data, it must be a standard and mandate to have the data itself encrypted to avoid use of the data from unauthorized users.
Fasoo Enterprise DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a file-based security solution that prevents the exposure of sensitive and confidential files by trusted insiders, business partners, customers and unauthorized people. This solution also protects, controls, and traces sensitive files containing intellectual property, trade secrets, PII, and more. It maintains file protection and prevents unintended information disclosure no matter where it is.
Remember, although compliance is the start to having a secure organization, data protection is needed to provide robust protection against data from being exposed.
Organizations are beginning to contemplate what the best solution is to prevent data breaches from happening to them. Recently the NCUA experienced a data breach when an examiner lost a flash drive with member’s personal information. Soon after NCUA Board Chairman, Debbie Matz contemplated a rule that would require encryption of the data.
Matz said it right though when referring that, “That’s a very fundamental thing to do, to make sure that if the data is lost or stolen that members’ confidential information is protected.”
In the era of data breaches to be honest, you don’t hear a lot of headlines of organizations even contemplating to require encryption of their data. However, it is about time and it is probably in a lot people’s minds on why other major retailers, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, etc. are not making the headlines saying the same thing. Regardless of information was hacked from the outside, or stolen from insider threats, if the data was encrypted, there is reassurance on the part of both organizations and customers that their data is protected.
Data-centric security such as digital rights management, can prevent the exposure of sensitive and confidential files. By being able to encrypt and assign specific permission to your data as soon as they are created, you can have complete control and protection regardless of location or format.
As we continue to see the headlines of data breach start again in this new year, now is the time to make the decision to protect “the bottom line”. There is no excuse now, protect the data at all costs.
It’s December and we are thinking there can’t be anymore insider threats this year, right? Wrong. From the past two weeks, we’ve had an ex-employee charged with accessing boss’s emails, laptop with patient health information (PHI) stolen from an employee’s car, former family center employee accessed a database of personally identifiable information (PII) and lastly an examiner for a national association lost a flash drive containing PII of members of a $13 million federal credit union during a recent exam.
Just from this list which only contains insider data breaches from one week and in December, we can definitely say that these following organizations were not prepared for insider threats. However, some may think, how can we be prepared from these kinds of threats? Also some strategies after these kinds of breaches have been to plan how and when we will notify our customers. Even more so, people have thought that their security policies and procedures have been sufficient enough. However, as we constantly say, protecting the data itself is what prevents these kinds of data breaches from happening.
The reason behind this is, we have to assume that no matter what happens, files containing these kinds of data will be stolen, whether the insider has done this maliciously or by accident (loss or stolen). However, even after it has been stolen it is important to not allow unauthorized access to the data through these files. This is where data centric solution such as digital rights management comes along. Having the ability to set certain permissions of what each user can do, or being able to revoke access completely after realizing that those file have been stolen or lost, is a function that everyone mentioned above would have wished they had.
However, can we blame them for not thinking that this kind of data breach would happen to them? In times like this year and recent years before, the answer is now, absolutely! Every organization must be prepared, and now with warning from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, as well as the possibility of facing substantial fines from federal government organizations such as the FCC and state related organizations as well.
Remember, based on the headlines we see now on a weekly basis, everyone must be prepared for these kinds of data breaches, even to those that are inside our organizations.
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