Data fuels the digital economy, yet failing to protect it puts organizations at tremendous risk. With attackers using more advanced techniques and regulatory penalties intensifying, no enterprise can afford to neglect data security.
This comprehensive guide examines current threats, the core tenets of a sound data security strategy, and leading solutions in the market to fortify defenses. Whether just starting your journey or looking to expand existing safeguards, use this resource to make informed decisions that match needs and budget.
An Escalating Risk Landscape Calls for Urgent Action
Recent statistics paint an alarming picture:
- Data exposure incidents increased by 13% in 2022 compared to the prior year, exposing over 32 billion records. Nearly 20 million were sensitive records like financial information or medical data.
- The average cost of a data breach is close to $4.35 million, a record high.
- Over 80% of breaches involve leaked credentials, misconfigurations, or vulnerable software – issues that robust security controls can prevent.
Ransomware represents one of the fastest growing threats, with attacks rising 105% year-over-year in Q1 2023 alone. And insiders with malicious or careless intent make up 34% of compromises.
Strengthening oversight from policymakers further raises the stakes. Regulations like GDPR or CCPA impose strict data handling requirements and steep fines for non-compliance, running into the millions.
For small businesses and large enterprises alike, outdated practices cannot cut it anymore. The need of the hour calls for modern security capabilities to get visibility, lock down access, and stop threats before material damage occurs.
Designing Defense-in-Depth with Core Data Security Controls
While the variety of point solutions in the market today seems endless, several pillars form the foundation of a robust data security strategy:
Discovery and Classification
Visibility into sensitive or regulated data represents the critical first step. Capabilities should provide:
- Identification of structured and unstructured data across cloud, on-premises, hybrid environments: Scanning network shares, SaaS platforms, databases etc. using either agents or APIs.
- Automatic and customized classification with tags and labels: Determining the type of data based on patterns, metadata and applying appropriate categories for access control and monitoring.
- Contextual analysis around ownership, flow patterns and risk: Enriching security teams with insights needed for informed policy decisions.
Top solutions in this space like Cyera and Dig excel at accelerated discovery and intelligent classification tailored to the organization‘s environment.
Access Controls
The principle of least privilege forms the bedrock of restricting data access on a need-to-know basis. Tactics should incorporate:
- Granular role definitions aligned to functions: Using identity and attributes to dictate access rather than broad group classifications prone to creep or insider threats.
- Integration with existing authentication systems like SSO or LDAP: Making it easy to define consistent controls across mixed environments without another portal to manage.
- Automated enforcement and remediation workflows: Programmatically revoking access when employees change roles or enforcing data handling policies based on classification tags.
Vendors like Forcepoint, Imperva and Securiti offer advanced options to implement least privilege access at scale.
Encryption
Rendering data unreadable to unauthorized parties, encryption provides fundamental safeguards against improper access and theft. Best practices involve:
- Employing layered controls at rest, in transit, in use: Covering data whether it sits on a server, moves over the network, or appears on an end user‘s screen.
- Policy-driven approaches allowing granular control: Specifying which data at what locations to encrypt based on sensitivity levels.
- Leveraging hardware-based acceleration for high performance on intensive workloads: So lack of compute resources does not bottleneck rollout, especially for large files and databases.
Innovators like nCipher combine robust crypto engines with versatile management software for defense tailored to an organization‘s needs.
Backup and Recovery
While prevention represents the first goal, being able to rapidly recover from incidents remains essential. The components of a resilient data protection strategy involve:
- Point-in-time snapshots from multiple restore points: To roll back to a version unaffected by malware like ransomware.
- Geographically distributed copies: Storing backups both onsite and offsite in case of location-specific failures like natural disasters.
- Immutable storage with append-only writing: Stopping malicious actors from manipulating or destroying backups once created.
Solutions from Druva, Veeam and others now automate orchestration of on-premises and multi-cloud data protection for fast, reliable restores.
Monitoring and Threat Detection
While the controls above focus on prevention, catching compromises in progress proves vital as attackers find new ways to penetrate defenses over time.
- High fidelity monitoring combining network, endpoint, identity and access telemetry: Correlating suspicious behaviors across kill chains using advanced analytics like machine learning and user behavior analysis.
- Non-disruptive detection providing early warning before data gets altered or stolen: Alerting security teams about risks and attempted exploits even if blocking does not occur.
- Root cause analysis to understand full impact and prevent replay: Using techniques like network traffic capture and endpoint forensics to determine the initial compromise vector and stop repeat instances.
SIEM solutions from Exabeam and others now ingest from expanded sources and leverage automation to accelerate threat hunting.
Risk Analysis and Compliance
Especially with heightened regulatory obligations, understanding vulnerabilities and adhering to external policies represents a key responsibility. Capabilities that help streamline the process include:
- Centralized dashboards displaying risk exposure and progression over time: Based on automated data discovery, misconfiguration scans and attack simulations across on-prem and cloud environments.
- Mapping of controls to major compliance frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA etc.: To simplify audit preparations and demonstrate adherence to specific mandates.
- Built-in templates and customizable reporting: Speeding evidence gathering for regulators needing details on security posture.
Platforms from LogicHub and others provide actionable visibility allowing security and audit teams to focus on moving the needle rather than spreadsheet crunching.
