Don’t be Held Hostage by Your Own Data

1. Encrypt sensitive stored data. This addresses information stored on corporate servers as well as devices usedby the individual employees. It is critical that information taken out of the corporate environment be encrypted. When a device is lost or stolen, it is critical the data remain inaccessible to people who can potentially hold it hostage.
2. Encrypt transmission of sensitive data. This is often overlooked, because even when there is a breach during transmission, your data is not actually missing. Many business applications still make use of the FTP protocol that fails to protect data and credentials. Organizations need to establish a corporate standard that address the confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements around how data is transmitted within the organization, as well as over public networks. The standard should include anenterprise messaging system and a managed file transfer system to track what information is being transmitted to whom and when.
3. Track and monitor all access to network resources and sensitive data. Many think of this as Log Management and the challenges of dealing with the large volumes of computer-generated log messages. There are a number of applications that will address the collecting of logs, centralized aggregation, long-term retention, analysis, search and reporting.  However, log data may be only part of the story. In order to do this to leverage standard enterprise messaging systems, data needs to be integrated across machines, systems, applications, and people. With access to all the relevant data comes the ability to make truly informed business decisions to answer pressing questions, uncover answers to unasked questions, and even anticipate.