Every business needs to be able to navigate the complexities of the digital landscape with confidence, ensuring that data remains a trusted resource and a catalyst for progress rather than a liability.
This article demystifies data security by explaining crucial reasons why it has become important in the modern technological landscape as well as the biggest threats that data security leaders are faced with. We shall round up by considering best practices for organizations to take to enhance their cybersecurity in this age.
Why is Data Security Important?
A cursory look at the state of cybersecurity today will show that it is almost entirely focused on data security. This underscores the crucial role data plays in organizations today and why it has become so important. Some of those reasons are explored below:
Digital Transformation
The increasing digitization of businesses has inevitably led to a greater reliance on data. While this has supercharged operational efficiency and enhanced transformation across various businesses, it also leaves data seriously at risk and vulnerable to attack.
Indeed, organizations are exploring intelligent insights from data analytics to transform their businesses and products. However, the more this happens, the greater the likelihood of suffering data breaches, hacking attempts, and unauthorized access.
Data Privacy
Over the past few years, there has been increased attention on data privacy as a human right that must be protected. Big tech companies have come under repeated public and media attacks, and in some cases, government sanctions, for the misuse of consumer data.
Any organization that collects personal information, especially those of a sensitive kind, has a responsibility to protect such data from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. Hence, data security is not something that any organization can afford to ignore.
Distributed Workforce
There had been a growing tendency towards COVID-19; however, the pandemic and the lockdown that came with it accelerated this growth as most companies were forced to adopt remote operations.
Some companies have rolled back this model, but for the business world in general, remote work is here to stay and where workers don’t work fully remotely, hybrid models have been a comfortable compromise for both employers and employees. However, this distributed workforce model makes data security more complicated as security teams have to protect data that is spread across multiple networks and devices.
Business Value of Data
Another reason for data security is that the business value of data has skyrocketed over the past few years. Certainly, not everyone has forgotten when The Economist ran a piece announcing the dethronement of oil as the world’s most valuable resource.
Data is not just a means of doing business. It is an asset on its own, one that organizations will stop at nothing to protect, especially when it directly implies their operations.
The business value of data is evident across industries from healthcare to finance, manufacturing to transportation, and more. Also, the consequences of mishandling data could be huge. Besides sanctions, financial losses, damaged reputation, and potential legal liabilities are a few consequences that could ensue.
Biggest Data Security Threats
This section explores some of the most critical data security threats facing organizations today.
1. Phishing and Social Engineering
US citizens recorded a $52 million loss to phishing scams in 2022 alone, according to the FBI. Obviously, organizations must have lost so much more. In fact, according to a report, about 80 – 95% of all cyber attacks begin with phishing. Once the attacker is able to gain their victim’s trust and access the system, it’s all downhill from then.
The situation has become worse now with the introduction of generative AI chatbots which can enable attackers to create human-like messages like never before.
Already, cybercriminals are training their own AI chatbots for malicious purposes based on popular large language models such as ChatGPT and Bard. Automating this process allows phishers to cast their net even wider than ever before.
2. Insider Threats and Human Errors
As a report by Cybersecurity Insiders indicates, 74% of organizations are vulnerable to insider threats and more than half of them have indeed experienced at least one attack in the last year. These insider attacks have become more difficult to detect due to the shift to the cloud.
So, the problem with them is not just about the human factor, there’s a technological dimension too. Ponemon’s 2022 Cost of Insider Threat global report showed how insider threats have risen by 44% over the past two years and the average time to contain incidents have increased from 77 to 85 days.
It should also be noted that most insider threats are caused by negligent, rather than malicious insiders, and this highlights the role of data governance in data security, and that will be explored further below.
3. Malware and Ransomware
Ransomware needs no news; everyone who follows technology news perhaps has gotten used to announcements of ransomware attacks, with even big tech suffering huge losses.
According to a 2023 report, 66% of organizations were hit by ransomware within the past year, with the most common root causes being exploited vulnerabilities and compromised credentials.
Most of these attacks are successful because of the lack of proper encryption by several organizations. 97% of organizations that had their data encrypted got it back without having to pay ransom to criminals.Â
Best Practices for Data Security
The data security landscape has been fraught with serious attacks for years. And while organizations have recorded some progress in enhancing their practices, strategies, and tools, there are still critical areas that are often largely ignored or otherwise not implemented effectively.
- Effective Data Governance: due to the rising spate of negligent insider attacks, organizations need to establish data governance frameworks to establish policies, procedures, and responsibilities for protecting data throughout its lifecycle. A robust strategy will include data ownership, classification, access, controls, etc.
- Real-time Monitoring: modern data security solutions should adopt real-time monitoring that integrates intelligent behavioral analytics with robust incident response. This will enable organizations to identify suspicious behavior and respond to potential threats proactively and in real-time.
- Encryption and Backup: protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access is nearly impossible without proper encryption controls in place. The same applies to regular data backups. With these measures, even when data is attacked and intercepted, the organization will not suffer any major loss, especially if they use a data loss prevention tool.
- Endpoint Security: the dispersal and the increasing number of endpoints across organizational networks have necessitated endpoint security solutions that prevent devices and users from becoming cheap entry points for cybercriminals and other malicious actors.
- Risk-Based Security: overall, every organization’s data security approach must prioritize potential threats based on their severity and likelihood of occurrence. Risk assessments of the threat landscape should be a norm so that the management can effectively allocate resources to address the most significant risks.
Conclusion
As our reliance on data continues to grow, the insights provided in this article illustrate the importance of securing sensitive information and highlight the gravity of the challenges faced by individuals, businesses, and governments. Embracing a proactive approach to data security is essential to fortify our defenses against an evolving array of threats.
