Maintaining data protection and privacy at the highest level is certainly one of the most challenging tasks to perform. The experts need to get their data categorized in terms of risk and ensure that both personal and sensitive information is secure with the use of appropriate strategies and technologies.
The rise in COVID-19 cases has provided no relief from the data protection issues. In fact, the challenges have grown multifold. The world is now facing more security and data breaches with the rise in the use of online platforms. The data that has been the reason for success for businesses around is not facing the risk of being compromised.
The challenges of securing customer data preferences and privacy are quite significant. In the last decade, we have already lost billions because of data breaches. So, it’s high time that we understand different problems that the company can face in terms of data protection and privacy.
With the need for data getting higher and higher, it is important that we check out the challenges that businesses face in terms of data security:
#1 The Data Growth:
In the last few years, the world has witnessed a huge rise in data numbers. Every single second, more than 1.7MB of data is developed. It is important for businesses around the world to keep their data safe and secure. Not only do they need to protect their own business details but also their customer’s sensitive data. As per the report provided by Breach level Index, from the year of 2013, more than 9,198,580,200 data records have already been stolen or lost.
This shows how the creation of data has grown quite tremendously in the last few years. But, still, businesses are implying poor security exercises to avoid any kind of data breach activities. When it comes to data privacy, PII or Personal Identifiable Information has to be considered as one of the biggest problems. It has literally become quite overwhelming for businesses around the world to manage data records in millions or even billions in numbers through our technology-driven world.
#2 Data Privacy Maintenance Costs:
Your business can suffer the loss of millions of dollars because of any data breach-related cyber-attack. As per the reports of Ponemon Institute, the world has been suffering from more than $3.62 million loss per year because of data breaches since the year 2017. Another scary fact is that there is a 30 percent chance for a company to face a data breach issue in the coming 2 years.
If it happens, they have to suffer from regulatory penalties from different entities. So, it is important for businesses around the world to consider investing in different security technologies in the form of data archiving, redundant, and backup infrastructure. This ensures that the data is safeguarded or can be restored and recovered.
#3 Open Vulnerabilities
As per the reports of CVE, more than 15000 vulnerabilities have been disclosed from the year of 2017. There has been a huge spike in the last few years in terms of vulnerabilities. So, businesses need to plan regarding the same as this leads to data breaching activities. The number of data breaches is also getting up with every passing year so, it is another major challenge for businesses around the world to deal with in terms of data protection.
It becomes very challenging for the IT security manager to take care of thousands of security patches released every passing year. This makes it difficult to have a proper patch management procedure in place to take care of the data protection and privacy aspects.
#4 Enhanced Technology Landscapes
Another major area of concern for security experts of businesses has to IoT. As per the recent study, it has been seen that more than 90 percent of security experts are more worried about IoT than their network security. When it comes to IoT vendors, they are not releasing security vulnerabilities patches proactively for the devices connected. But, still, the number of devices sold is growing at a rapid pace.
With the use of IoT, it is important for the security experts to assess their BYOD policies, get their IoT readiness strategy completed, and also assess the network to check whether the IoT devices are connected to the network or not. It becomes important for the experts to keep checking their network with SIEM or IDS/IPS tools. It helps in finding malicious activities that might happen in your data, applications, and network.
#5 Human Error
One of the biggest challenges a business can face in terms of data protection and security is avoiding human error. As per many security analysts, human error is the hardest to deal with to protect business data. Your employees can unknowingly leak passwords, delete data, fall into the traps of phishing scams, browse risky websites, and many other steps that can cause immense damage to businesses around the world.
So, it is important that you train your employees accordingly from beforehand. The training needs to be done regularly so that all these possible mistakes are avoided. There are many data loss prevention tools as well that can play a big role in avoiding human errors that can lead to a leak of sensitive information either through scams or by mistake. Doing the same can lessen your chances of being effected through data breach activities. But, the challenge is immense to deal with as one doesn’t know which employee can literally cause damage when they are working remotely.
Wrap Up
This shows the challenges businesses are facing around the world when it comes to getting their data protected from being stolen or leaked. There are numerous hurdles and pitfalls one faces because of the challenges mentioned. You just need to focus on the solutions that can save you from any data leakage or security threat. Improving your security infrastructure can certainly assist you in keeping your data safe and secure all the time. The data flow remains unaffected with proper security posture in place.
Author Bio
Neha Singh is the Founder & CEO of Securium Solutionswith a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. She is skilled in ECSA, Vulnerability Management, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Management, and Business Development. She loves traveling and trekking.
