What is Data Security? Importance, Types, and Threats

What is Data Security?

Data security is a set of tools, processes, and practices which serve the purpose of safeguarding our IT environment, and of course, the data contained within it. An effective data security strategy will incorporate numerous procedures and technologies that are designed to protect files, databases, accounts, applications, servers, and so on. A data security program should take into consideration which assets are the most sensitive, and those that are most at risk of being compromised. As Governments across the globe introduce new and/or improved data privacy regulations, organizations must ensure that they have the necessary tools in place to demonstrate their compliance efforts to the relevant supervisory authorities.

Why is Data Security Important

Of course, companies have a moral obligation to protect the sensitive data they are entrusted with, which is important, right? For most companies, the costs associated with a data breach provide the greatest incentive for them to implement a comprehensive data security strategy. After all, a serious and well-publicized data breach may cause considerable damage to their reputation, which will likely result in a loss of business. On top of this, they may be subject to costly lawsuits or fines. There are also costs associated with recovery/remediation, and in some cases, such as a Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack, they might inadvertently hand over large sums of money directly to the attacker. Below are some of the biggest risks associated with poor data security.

Costly fines and litigations: As mentioned above, were a company to suffer a serious data breach, it may be subject to costly fines and lawsuits. Customers who were affected by the breach may choose to take legal action, or regulators may choose to levy large fines for non-compliance.

Reputational damage: Any publicly disclosed data breach will negatively affect a company’s reputation. While some customers may not care so much about the incident, many will loose confidence in the company’s ability to safeguard the data they are entrusted with.

Loss of business: There are numerous ways in which poor data security will lead to a loss of business. For example, if a company falls victim to a ransomware attack, its systems will be inaccessible. This might lead to a loss of sales and prevent staff from being productive. And then there are remediation costs to consider. As mentioned above, the damage caused to the company’s reputation could result in them losing customers. And of course, having to shell-out large amounts of money on fines and legal fees will also mean less money to re-invest in the business, thus resulting in a loss of potential business.

Common Risks and Threats to Data Security

As businesses of all sizes become more technologically advanced, they become increasingly susceptible to cyberattacks. Some of the biggest risks to data security include:

Accidental Exposure

Many data breaches are not the result of a malicious attack but are caused by negligent or accidental exposure of sensitive data by employees. This major problem can be addressed by employee training, together with other measures including data loss prevention (DLP) technology and improved security measures.

Phishing and Other Social Engineering Attacks

Social engineering attacks are a key method used by attackers to access sensitive data. They involve manipulating or tricking individuals into providing private information or credentials to access privileged accounts.

One of the most common forms of social engineering attacks is phishing. It involves messages that appear to be from a trusted source but are actually sent by an attacker. When victims fall for this by, for example, providing private information or clicking a malicious link, attackers can compromise their device or gain access to a corporate network.

Insider Threats

Insider threats are employees who either accidentally or deliberately threaten the security of an organization’s data. There are three types of insider threats:

Non-malicious insider—users that cause harm accidentally or because they are unaware of security procedures

Malicious insider—users who actively attempt to steal data or cause harm to the organization for personal gain

Compromised insider—users who are not aware that their accounts or credentials were compromised by an external attacker. The attacker can then perform malicious activity, pretending to be a legitimate user.

Malware

Attackers use malicious software known as malware to infect computers and corporate networks by exploiting vulnerabilities in their software, such as web browsers or web applications. Malware can lead to serious data security incidents like data theft, extortion, and network damage.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a major threat to data in companies of all sizes. Ransomware is malware that infects corporate devices and encrypts data, making it useless without the decryption key. Attackers display a ransom message asking for payment to release the key, but in many cases, even paying the ransom is ineffective and the data is lost.

Many types of ransomware can spread rapidly if not detected immediately, and infect large parts of a corporate network. If an organization does not maintain regular backups, or if the ransomware manages to infect the backup servers, there may be no way to recover.

Cloud Data Loss

Many organizations are moving data to the cloud to enable easier sharing and collaboration. However, when data is moved to the cloud, it can be more difficult to prevent data loss in cloud. Users accessing data from personal devices and over unsecured networks make it all too easy to share a file with unauthorized parties, either accidentally or maliciously.

Data Security Types

There is a wide range of data security types which organizations can use to safeguard their data, devices, networks, systems, and users. Some of the most common types of data security include:

Encryption

Data encryption involves the use of algorithms to scramble data and hide its true meaning. Encrypting data ensures that messages can only be read by recipients with the appropriate decryption key. This is crucial, especially in the event of a data breach, because even if an attacker manages to gain access to the data, they will not be able to read it without the decryption key.

Data Masking

Data masking enables organizations to hide data by obscuring and replacing specific letters or numbers. This process is a form of encryption that renders the data useless should a hacker intercept it. The original message can only be uncovered by someone who has the code to decrypt or replace the masked characters.

Data Resiliency

Organizations can mitigate the risk of accidental destruction or loss of data by creating backups or copies of their data. Data backups are vital to protecting information and ensuring it is always available. It is particularly important that in the case of a data breach or ransomware attack, that organizations are able to restore an earlier backup.

Common Data Security Techniques

To effectively protect your organization from a cyberattack targeting sensitive data, a comprehensive data privacy solution which comprises several different techniques is required.

Listed below are some of the most important data security techniques for your organization to incorporate:

Identity and Access Management

Identity and access management (IAM) is the process of managing digital identities within your organization.

Strategies include zero trust network access (ZTNA), single sign-on (SSO), and multi-factor authentication (MFA), and by implementing these, you can establish the principle of least privilege (PoLP) to ensure that only end users with the approved privileges can access data relevant to their role.

Data Discovery and Analysis

Data discovery and analysis solutions allow organizations to quickly discover what types of data they have, where the data is located, and how the data is being used. This provides visibility of all data and allows organizations to quickly identify confidential data which needs to be secured. These solutions also allow identification across multiple IT environments, including internal data centers, cloud providers, and network endpoints.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

DLP solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically review and analyze an organization’s confidential data, as well as provide real-time alerts when they detect abnormal use of this data. In addition, these solutions provide centralized control of data security policies for sensitive data.

Another way organizations can prevent data loss is through data backups. These are particularly important for organizations storing their data in internal data centers, as unexpected events like power outages or natural disasters can destroy physical servers and any data that’s stored on them. Typically, data backups should be stored at remote sites or by using cloud environments.

Data and Application Retirement

Disposing of data and applications may seem straightforward, but standard data wiping isn’t a 100% effective solution. With robust data retirement software, an organization can properly dispose of data or expired applications at any time. These solutions completely overwrite data on any device and ensure that data cannot be recovered by anyone, including malicious actors.

Security Audits

To ensure that their data security strategies are effective, organizations must perform data security audits on a regular basis. These audits detect any weaknesses or vulnerabilities across an organization’s entire attack surface.

Endpoint Protection

With IT environments moving to the cloud as remote work increases, employee endpoints must be properly protected from threats like malware.

Unlike sanctioned or IT-managed devices, servers, or cloud systems, endpoints usually do not feature the same security protocols to protect against modern-day attacks like zero-day malware. With effective endpoint protection solutions in place, an organization is in a better position to detect unknown attacks on endpoints as they happen, as well as lock down any affected endpoint to prevent larger breaches.

Employee Education

An organization’s employees must have the appropriate education on data security best practices. This includes understanding how to create strong passwords for their individual accounts, as well as understanding what social engineering attacks like phishing schemes look like. In addition to educating your employees about these security strategies, it is essential to put processes in place to enforce best practice. For example, to require complex passwords for users when they create accounts and force password updates on a regular basis.

How Lepide Helps Improve Data Security

The Lepide Data Security Platform can help you improve your data security strategy by aggregating and summarizing event data from multiple sources – and this can be both for on-premise and cloud platforms. All important events are displayed via a single, centralized dashboard, with numerous options for sorting and searching. Below are some of the most notable features of the Lepide Data Security Platform:

Machine learning: Lepide uses machine learning algorithms to establish usage patterns that can be tested against to identify anomalous behavior.

Change auditing and reporting: Lepide’s change auditing and reporting tool enables you to keep track of how your privileged accounts are being accessed and used. Likewise, any time your sensitive data is accessed, shared, moved, modified, or deleted in an atypical manner, a real-time alert can be sent to your inbox or mobile device. Alternatively, you can simply review a summary of changes via the dashboard.

Data classification: The Lepide data classification tool will scan your repositories, both on-premise and in-the-cloud, and classify sensitive data as it is found. You can also customize the search according to the compliance requirements relevant to your business.

Threshold alerting: Lepide’s threshold alerting feature enables you to detect and respond to events that match a pre-defined threshold condition.

Inactive user account management: Lepide can help you locate any inactive, or “ghost” user accounts, thus preventing attackers from leveraging these accounts to perform nefarious activities.

If you’d like to see how the Lepide Data Security Platform can help give you more visibility over your sensitive data and protect you from security threats, schedule a demo with one of our engineers.