Security and Technology Evolution
With advanced technology,security too has to evolve in order to meet today’s sophisticated threats and evolved hackers. No doubt, the solutions used last year, or the year before, need to be re-assessed, to adapt and accommodate the current and future needs of organizations to deal with ever evolving threats.
Organization/Employee Skill gaps
One of the contributing and alleviating factors in rise of breach is the skills gap.This problem poses a serious risk to an organization. If security top level executives don’t fully understand the nature of their business and the importance of security and business personnel, there are chances that they can be disgruntled or ignorant while dealing with sensitive asset which will hamper their ability to reduce threats and mitigate risks.
Impact of Malicious Attack or Data Breach
Regardless of size and sector, cybercrime continues to escalate in frequency, impact and sophistication and threatens enterprises. A data breach or intrusion can cause an organization to lose the trustof customers and reputation value. The reputational damage suffered by companies who fail to protect personal data can translate directly into a loss in revenue.
According to The Ponemon Institute study, an alarming 85% of respondent businesses admitted that they have experienced a data security breach. Despite the frequency of such security failures, 46% of busine sses failed to implement encryption solutions even after suffering a data breach.
Alarming Growth in End-Points
The connected devices and assets introduce an incremental scaling problem that dwarfs most of our earlier security and compliance models. The effort needed to secure so many devices can surely drive up security operations costs and stretch any organization’s ability to make sure each device is compliant with industry standards.
Role of encryption and security in next gen of mobile networks
In the next generation, technologies like LTE (Long Term Evolution) provide speeds that allow carriers to offer a number of business-specific applications and services, for example video conferencing, in-office connectivity, uploading and downloading large files, etc. In addition, it also provides gaming, downloading movies, music and other wireless applications that bring a desktop experience to users’ wireless devices. These new technologies demands that security functions should be optimally and efficiently embedded into the overall system.
If security practices are automatic and deeply embedded into the infrastructure—making them as transparent as possible to administrators and users—compliance can be ensured and corporate assets can be protected against potential vulnerabilities that arise in complex networks with multiple devices and platforms.
The Secret for Protecting Data
The above mentioned challenges are not going away soon. It’s a high time for organizations to adopt the changes/trends and going forward includes data security to manage and mitigate the escalating security, compliance an operational risk.Below is a list of best practices that an organization can take to protect themselves:
- Develop a holistic data protection strategy
- Perform an audit to keep this data out of the wrong hands
- Encrypt all data whether at rest or in transit
- Key Management to detect anomalous behavior, such as rogue self-signed certificates
- Have a BYOD Policy in place so that they don’t become a source of data breaches or security leak
- Monitor activity and stay up to date on threats
- Limit Access to secure sensitive data
- Software Updates to make your system more secure.
- Train Employees on application of the policies that are put in place, and understand that they are accountable
It’s high time to take targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats seriously. Avoid becoming the next major data breach story by taking action and initiative with your data security and protecting what’s valuable to your organization. With careful planning and equal investments in people, process and technology, one can stay ahead of threats while reducing complexity and compliance costs.
