It is estimated that there is a hacker attack every 39 seconds. This crazy statistic is even more daunting to small companies, which lost an average of $200,000 to hackers in 2019. With data becoming a valuable asset coveted by both businesses and nefarious organizations, it is not a surprise that the number of data breaches in the U.S. has significantly shot up within the past decade from 662 in 2010 to over a thousand by 2020. To clarify, A data breach is an incident where information is stolen or taken from a system without the knowledge or authorization of the system’s owner. The average cost of a data breach in 2020 was $3.86 million, a 10% rise over the last five years.
With cybercrime on the rise, these alarming statistics have alarmed the importance of good cybersecurity practices for businesses, individuals, and governments worldwide. Data security has become just as important an issue.
What is data security?
According to IBM, data security is the practice of protecting digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle. Practices like data encryption, data masking, erasure, etc., are all customary practices for reasonable data security.
Let’s look at some of the top 3 causes for data security breaches:
- Hacking or Malware: These may include tactics like phishing, social engineering, or even malware(malicious software that executes commands without the user’s approval).
- Physical device loss: Loss of devices such as phones, laptops, and tablets, can lead to compromise of PII.
- Unintended disclosures: Filling out confidential data can sometimes compromise more significant data assets
However, data breaches have existed for a long time. When data was held physically or in person, the spillage of confidential information has been a sore thumb writing the history of humanity. The first notable digital breach occurred in March 2005, where 1.4 million credit card numbers and names were exposed due to a data breach at DSW Shoe Warehouse.
Often heard alongside data security, data privacy is a hot topic in the news nowadays. Data privacy generally means the ability of a person to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent personal information about them is shared with or communicated to others. Although there is significant overlap in function, data security is tasked with protecting the data, whereas privacy is only responsible for ensuring access to those who require it. For example, encryption o data ensures privacy but ay not ensure security.
How can a data catalog ensure data security?
- Data discovery: In the past, the long and arduous process of data security had raised significant data security concerns over pattern recognition, exposure of sensitive data, and access management. A modern data catalog automates the process of identification and helps to identify any vulnerabilities.
- Visibility of assets: By maintaining an inventory of all data assets, a good data catalog can automate compliance reporting for all assets while providing a centralized system for governance
- AI/ML: A data catalog can use Vulnerability assessment and risk analysis algorithms to detect and mitigate potential weak points such as outdated software, misconfigurations, weak passwords, etc.
- Access management: A data catalog can clearly define ownership, stewards, and users, allowing for stringent access management Business Glossary: Defining data assets and updating policies for use through a business glossary ensures clarity around use cases. Automatic masking of PII is a must as well.
How does DvSum help protect your data?
Industry-accepted best practices and frameworks: DvSum’s security approach focuses on security governance, risk management, and compliance. This includes encryption at rest and in transit, network security and server hardening, administrative access control, system monitoring, logging, and alerting.
Single Sign-On: Single Sign-on for user access (like Azure ADFS, Okta, or any SAML-supported Provider) allows users to configure DvSum to use the same Identity Provider. If you do not use SSO, you can let DvSum manage user authentication powered by AWS Cognito.
Your data never leaves your Network: With Cloud solutions, you typically have to give your data to vendors, and vendor cloud security becomes a critical requirement. With DvSum, the data scanning happens inside your network, and only metadata is sent outside your network to DvSum Cloud. Get the benefit of SaaS solution without increased data protection footprint.
Role-based access controls: DvSum allows for separation of privilege by user role.
