How can businesses develop realistic strategies to address security weaknesses and data privacy? The first step in this process probably requires the identification of what is happening (what we can call the ‘reality). The follow-up step should be concerned with formulating strategies to address risks identified from the identified ‘realities’. Digital Journal caught up with Zophar Sante, who is the Security Information Specialist at Open Systems, to learn what these three data realities are and how appropriate solutions can be formulated.
Reality 1 – We have an appetite for personal data
With the first reality, Zophar Sante says: “Businesses no longer sift through sales reports, conduct surveys, or measure click-throughs to understand what their customers require. Instead they gather data from many sources and use big data analytics to update their products to best meet consumer needs, often at the level of the individual consumer.”
Many companies say they use data to improve the customer experience, although marketing to offer new products and increasing sales is at the heart.
Sante adds: “Most organizations treat data with respect, and more laws are underway that will go after those who do not.”
Reality 2 – Bad actors want to get their hands on our data
Interpreting the second reality, Sante offers: “While organizations use personal data to improve our overall experience, there are others with less noble goals. It does not take long for a successful cybercriminal to illegally download a customer database for the purposes of exploiting people for personal profit.”
As an example, Sante says: “According to the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Journal, September 2020 was the worst month so far for cyberattacks, 83 breaches were attributed to hacking incidents, and 9,662,820 records were exposed in those breaches.”
Reality 3 – It’s not getting easier for businesses to protect our data
For the third reality, Sante details: “COVID-19 forced many organizations to hastily adjust their networks to comply with stay-at-home orders for their employees. In time, businesses learned that moving applications to the cloud and a remote workforce was not only more cost-effective, but users remained productive.”
Sante adds: “Although business efficiency improved, cybersecurity lagged behind and the cyberattack surface became much larger.”
Three realities and an opportunity for change
How can these realities be addressed by businesses. According to Sante: “Tech leaders cannot do much to address the first reality, the drive for more data. However, leaders can address the second and third realities. At the end of 2019, Gartner defined a new secure network architecture, SASE (secure access service edge), that can meet the challenges.”
As to what this entails, Sante says: “SASE is a cloud-based service that unifies security and SD-WAN into one platform. It provides a service a growing remote workforce and simplifies application migration while strengthening security.”
Furthermore, Sante says: “To ensure networks remain safe, security services are unified into one step and moved out to the edge of the network where remote users, endpoints, and network access intersect.” Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed.
In summary, Sante concludes stating: “Many leaders view an increase in bad actors and an expanding remote workforce as an opportunity to accelerate their transition to the cloud. Services, like SASE, provide the security and network roadmap needed so they can achieve that goal.”
