We are now living in an age of information technology where data is considered to be the most valuable asset of any business or organization. It is also a fact that many businesses too, are crippled with data breaches every now and then. On checking the instance of data breaches, we can see that even the biggest organizations are not safe from the data hacks by quoting the history of JPMorgan Chase data of 76 million users and the 2015 Anthem breach which exposed personal demographics and social security data of many.
Enterprises started giving more importance to data security within organizations and also make use of newer technologies to ensure it. More secure storage solutions and better data management tools are available now to ensure data security and users also started investing more time into data security training. In this article, we are discussing five advanced ways through which organizations now try to ensure data privacy and security.
1.Manage data accesses by securing them
At the first point, any organization should take an inventory of what data to be availed by whom. Access privileges should be well defined and well maintained to avoid any scope of a data breach from within. It is ideal to limit the employees and admins access to a small portion of data in a manageable number. Also, it is ideal to have your admins determine what type of access each employee and department needs to make use of data the best.
Credential management is an essential way to ensure the database security as attackers may often see any compromise on the privileged accounts as an opportunity to gain access to the confidential data. So, minimizing the scope of permanent privileges to data accounts will help reduce the risk of such compromises and the scope of malicious data use.
2. Know your data and protect the most important
If any data breach occurs suddenly, then would you be able to identify which is the most valuable data to you? Every organization should first identify which data is most valuable and try to ensure maximum protection. It’s about 5% to 10% of the crucial company data is identified as the most previous data or also called the crown jewel of data, which if compromised, will cause the most damage to organizations.
Once if this set of data is identified and filtered out, then you should work on protocols on accessing this data and procedures to secure this data. There are many data security measures to be chosen based on the nature of the data and your risk of getting this data exposure to internal and external users.
3. Make a foolproof policy for data security.
Another key strategy while planning for data privacy and security is to develop a data policy for the business. It is good to have a proper plan in place in case of any data breaches or hacks occur. Such a policy in place will help to keep the employees in line with the organizational plan.
While developing such a policy, it should also be kept open to future changes based on the changing requirements in terms of data management. Upgrades and amendments should be needed in the future to make it match the industry changes and technological advancements. As RemoteDBA.com points out, with access rules for data are getting enforced more strictly, a policy in place will help streamline data management and be compliant.
4. Develop strong passwords and security measures
Employees and administrators with access to the database need to have much stronger and difficult to crack passwords. It is essential to help them develop more complicated passwords with a combination of letters of a mixed case, number, special characters, etc. which will make it difficult for the hackers to trace.
As a rule of thumb, while creating secured passwords, try to make it a minimum of 12 characters and not include a simple combination of dictionary words like ‘green apple’ or so. Ensure that the passwords you use are unique for each employee and difficult for the machine algorithms to guess.
5. Take regular backups
Most importantly, it is essential to take a backup of your business data at regular intervals. In case of any data loss, hack, or other serious issues, every organization need to be prepared to restore the data. There are many ways to backup data automatically or manually using different tools. So, do the backup on a daily or weekly basis to safeguard your critical databases.
Make sure that you are backed up data is also secure from any hackers or other intrusions. With a strong data protection software, and by following all the security measures, businesses can fight off any potential threats against data hacks and effectively build their values around the concept of data security.
6. Use a stronger firewall.
Firewalls are must in order to protect the data network. A good firewall can protect your business information network by monitoring and controlling the internet traffic into the network and also the outgoing traffic. There are many firewalls serving this purpose, and you need to choose the adequate one for your purpose.
7. Update the data security programs and applications regularly.
Along with the usage of the most advanced database applications, firewalls, and data protection tools, it is important to keep your system always pitched properly and consistently updated. When it comes to security, hackers can always find ways to intrude into an age-old technology, so the providers used to keep on updating their applications and release frequent patches to fight the latest security threats. So, there is no point in installing all the data protection applications and software if you are not maintaining and updating them properly.
Any security application for internet and information security is only as good as its latest update. No application is 100% foolproof, so it is important to update the tools urgently as soon as a new update comes.
Along with ensuring full security of your data sources and stores, it is also important to ensure security on your connected devices too as mobile phones or other gadgets you connect to the database servers and systems. Nowadays, individual smartphones also hold a fair amount of data, so it is important to install data protection tools and passwords on your smartphones too, which will otherwise act as an easy entry point for the hackers to get access to your databases.