Joe MartinThe number of successful data breaches is growing at a rapid rate. Growing attack surfaces, complex IT infrastructure and wider cloud adoption are some of the reasons behind this surge in successful data breaches. Not only that, cyber-attacks and data breaches are becoming more and more sophisticated with each passing day. How can you protect your critical business data in such a situation?
Thankfully, all hope is not lost as most data breaches can easily be prevented especially if businesses stop making cybersecurity mistakes. These mistakes not only allow cybercriminals to steal their data but also get away with it without leaving a trace. This is why it is important for businesses to stop making these mistakes over and over again.
In this article, you will learn about five common data security pitfalls and how you can avoid them.
Data Security Responsibility
“We shouldn’t ask our customers to make a tradeoff between privacy and security. We need to offer them the best of both. Ultimately, protecting someone else’s data protects all of us.”– Tim Cook
There is a huge talent shortfall in cybersecurity. Businesses are struggling to find suitable candidates to fill new job positions and roles. Shrinking IT budgets and limited resources force businesses to prepare their employees to wear different hats. Due to this, most businesses don’t dedicate resources to data security. This will become clearly evident when organizations have to go through a third-party security audit as they are under pressure to find who is actually responsible for ensuring the security of their data. When you don’t hold anyone responsible and accountable for data security, your business data is more vulnerable to getting stolen.
Not Looking Beyond Compliance
Most businesses think that if they have passed the compliance test, they are safe from attacks. On the contrary, security professionals say that compliance is not equal to security. According to cybersecurity experts, most businesses focus on limited resources when achieving compliance.
Yes, they might get the certificate but that does not mean that they are hacker-proof. We have seen many companies who have compliance but still become a victim of a data breach and cybersecurity attacks because they lack DDoS protection. The number of such cases is on the growth which should set alarm bells ringing for businesses who think that compliance means security.
Lack of Centralized Data Security System
Most businesses are still skeptical when it comes to migrating completely to the cloud, due to security and privacy concerns. As a result, they prefer to test the water first by adopting a hybrid approach. They keep their critical data in-house, stored on servers while migrating their less critical data to the cloud. This allows businesses to test whether the cloud is the right fit for them or not.
With most businesses operating in a hybrid multi-cloud environment, which is growing and evolving with each passing day, we might see new types of data storage pop up every month. This can disperse your data. To prevent your data from getting dispersed, you need to implement a centralized data security system. Centralized data security systems not only prevent data redundancies but also makes it more accessible. Moreover, it also keeps your data up to date.
Ignoring Known Vulnerabilities
Did you know that major data breaches targeting large scale enterprises succeed because of known vulnerabilities? Yes, that’s right. When these vulnerabilities go unpatched, cybercriminals take advantage of it and exploit these loopholes to fulfil their malicious designs. These unpatched vulnerabilities provide an easy point of entry to cyberattackers.
IDC report highlights the issues companies are facing when it comes to managing data security. In fact, 37% of respondents admitted that the increasing complexity of cybersecurity solutions is a huge challenge, which prevents organizations from implementing cybersecurity policies and negatively impact data governance.
No Data Activity Monitoring
Most organizations never consider data monitoring as an integral part of their cybersecurity strategy which is why they fail to monitor and detect suspicious data activities taking place on their data. It is important for businesses to understand who is accessing their data and how they are doing it. Additionally, they should also keep an eye on when their data is getting accessed.
When you know who is accessing your data when and how it will be easier for you to decide about roles and policies. Does the person accessing your sensitive information should have access to it or not? Make sure to create a log of all the activities that are taking place and analyze all these logs at the end of the day. This way, you can easily identify suspicious activities taking place on your data and take steps to stop them. Which is the biggest data security pitfall in your opinion? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.
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