Information Technology Agreement

What is data security and why is it key in companies?

 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.

 Backup and recovery

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. TC Bolts

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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