The more technology makes our working lives easier, the more it seems technology complicates our lives by making it easier for insiders with malicious intent and outsiders bent on stealing our secrets to steal our data. Whether you have done it recently or sometime in the past you will have locked down and secured your corporate data and make sure that your organisation cannot be breached.
However, it seems that the inevitable consequence of our technological advances is a well-trained, determined phalanx of hackers who are an increasing threat to all organisations. If you add to this the bring your own device problem, where consumer devices are entering the enterprise by the back door and causing havoc, then you will have to be vigilant 24 hours a day seven days a week. David Gibson, VP of Marketing at Varonis, gives you some guidance on how to do that without turning your office into your bedroom. Here are Varonis’ top 10 tips to prevent a data catastrophe.
Firstly, let's just look at how much data you have to store and how fast it's growing. The 2011 IDC Digital Universe study 1 forecast that in 2011 alone 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data would be created. This is the equivalent of every U.S. citizen writing 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years. The report states that over the next decade, the number of servers managing the world's data centers will grow tenfold and the world's data will grow by a factor of 50.
The study goes on to say that “While 75% of the information in the digital universe is generated by individuals, enterprises have some liability for 80% of information in the digital universe at some point in its digital life,” and, “Less than a third of the information in the digital universe can be said to have at least minimal security or protection; only about half the information that should be protected is protected.
In order to assess your data protection capabilities, you first need to determine if you can answer basic questions about data. You may assume you can answer these questions, but as I mentioned before, an assumption can be your first mistake. Can you answer for any data set, “who has access to it, who is accessing it, who should have access to it, who owns it, when was the last time access was reviewed, which data is critical, and where is critical data overexposed?” For any individual, you need to be able to answer similar questions, like, “what data do they have access to and what data have they accessed over the last 30 days?” Each question you can’t answer represents an opportunity to improve your security.
The uncomfortable fact is that the complexity of managing the data is growing faster than the resources available within the vast majority of organizations. With another uncomfortable problem coming down the road towards us — the fact that we are also running out of skilled IT personnel to deal with this tsunami of data — it is time to take stock and examine how the average organization can prevent a data catastrophe.
With over 23 million records containing personally identifiable information (PII) leaked in 2011 alone (source: privacyrights.org), it is more important than ever for organizations to ensure sensitive data is secure. In many organizations, keeping up with data growth and preventing a data catastrophe seems insurmountable with existing IT resources —imagine how it is going to be in a few years without additional skilled staff to help you.