Data security has always been important. But with more and more people working and shopping remotely as a result of the current health crisis (and cloud usage has exploded), there are more opportunities than ever for unauthorized access to your data.
The key pieces of information that companies commonly store - be it employee records, customer details, loyalty schemes, transactions, or data collection - need to be protected. This is to prevent third parties from misusing that data to commit fraud, such as phishing scams and identity theft.
Common data that your business might store include:
Names
Addresses
Emails
Telephone numbers
Bank and credit
card details
Sensitive
information (health data, etc.)
This data contains confidential information that could be
related to your current staff, your associates or closest relatives; shareholders,
business partners, customers, and other members of the public.
Elements of data security
Within data security are considered:
Authentication
Authentication, along with authorization, is one of the
recommended ways to increase data security and protect against data breaches. Authentication
technology verifies whether a user's credentials match those stored in the
database. Today's standard authentication processes include the use of a
combination of ways to identify an authorized user, such as passwords, PINs,
security tokens, a magnetic card, or biometrics.
Authentication is facilitated by single sign-on technology,
which, with a security token, allows an authenticated user to access multiple
systems, platforms, and applications. Authorization technology determines
what an authenticated user can do or see on your website or server.
Access control
Authentication and authorization occur through a process
called access control, which can include:
Discretionary
access control (the least restrictive), which allows access to resources based
on the identity of users or groups.
Role-based access
control, which assigns access based on organizational role and allows users to
access only specific information.
Mandatory access control,
which allows the system administrator to strictly monitor access to all
information.
Prioritizing data sanctuary also requires a plan for how
to access your company and customer data in the event of system failure,
disaster, data corruption or breach. Backing up data regularly is an
important activity to support that access.
A data backup involves making a copy of your data and
storing it on a separate system or medium, such as tape, disk, or in the
cloud. You can recover the lost data using its backup.
Encryption
Data encryption software effectively improves data
security by using an algorithm (called encryption) and an encryption key to
convert plain text to ciphertext. For an unauthorized person, the
encrypted data will be unreadable.
Then that data can only be decrypted by a user with an
authorized key. Encryption is used to protect the data you store (called
data at rest) and the data exchanged between databases, mobile devices, and the
cloud (called data in transit). Your encryption keys must be managed
securely, including protecting your critical management systems, managing a secure
encryption backup off-site, and restricting access.
Data masking
Data masking software hides letters and numbers with
proxy types. The data is still there, overdue the masking. The computer
software changes the data to its original form only when an authorized user
receives it.
Tokenization
Tokenization replaces sensitive data with random
characters that are not algorithmically reversible. The affiliation
between the data and its token values is stored in a protected database
lookup table, rather than being generated and decrypted by a mathematical
algorithm (as in the case of encryption). The token representing the
actual data is used in different systems as a replacement, while the actual
data is stored on a separate secure platform.
Identify all
IT assets on your network
The first step
in applying any type of defense strategy is knowing which are all the resources
that you need to protect. Take a thorough inventory of all the devices on
your network, be it printers, workstations, Internet of Things (IoT) devices,
smartphones, etc. You should also account any third-party systems that are
in your partner network, because these devices could be used to break into your
network.
Once you have an
inventory of all the devices connected to the internet in your company, you
also need to know what software / firmware is running those devices, that is,
operating systems like Windows, Mac or Linux. This information is crucial
for knowing what needs patches and when.
Also, consider
establishing a strategy to change your assets to reduce complexity. You need to make
sure that most of your assets have compatible operating systems ; This can make it easier to keep
track of security updates and patches.
2. Assess your
risks
Now that you
know what's on your system, it's time to assess how much risk each of the
network's devices and platforms represents so that you can prioritize them as
needed.
This risk
assessment should consist of more than a few steps, with:
System characterization (process, application, function)
Threat identification
Determination of risk and impact
Control environment analysis
Determination of probability ranking
Calculation of the risk rating
After
identifying all the risks your organization faces, you can prioritize them
based on severity and ease of repair . This way, you can close the chief gaps in your
cybersecurity posture as quickly as possible.
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