Data Security Trends in 2022
Technology

Data Security Trends in 2022: How to Ensure Enhanced Security?

Data breaches are not new, but of late, they have increased due to several reasons, including remote work, lack of secure systems, and lower cybersecurity planning. For example, the Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC) report indicated a 17% increase in data breaches for 2021. 

These data breaches can not only tarnish the reputation of your business but also increase the cost of data recovery. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach for any organization has risen to $4 million. In addition, such data breaches can lead to the exposure of sensitive information used as a ransom to extract money. 

A survey indicates that, on average, a ransomware payment for US companies is $6 million. The best way to avoid such data breaches is to have proper security measures. It would help keep up with the data security trends to ensure that your systems are ready for any malicious injection or cyber-attacks. 

So, here we are with a comprehensive guide on different data security trends and how you can leverage them for your business. But, first, let’s understand the basics of data security briefly. 

What is Data Security?

Data security is a practice of using different security standards, policies, and tools to reduce,

  • Unauthorized data access
  • Accidental data loss
  • Data thefts

It includes engaging trending technologies and executing administrative controls to ensure data protection. The process of data security can even involve limiting access to information, manipulation, and sensitive data disclosure as per security policies. 

Formulating such security policies needs proper analysis of the organization’s structure, operations, and systems. Based on the analysis, you can develop critical access controls for data security across the organization with three fundamental aspects.

Data confidentiality

Ensure that the sensitive data stays confidential and only a specific set of employees or people access such information. There are two ways to achieve that one is by restricting the access, and the other is by using encryption technology and authentication of the person before they can access the information. 

Take an example of any eCommerce platform that saves a user’s credit card information. If credit card credentials are exposed to hackers, users can face financial fraud, and as a business, your reputation will take a hit. 

This is why there is a security standard that every eCommerce company needs to follow known as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). However, you need to have advanced data protection measures at an organizational level. 

Data integrity

Data integrity deals with an aspect of maintaining information in its purest form. Your data needs to be secure and not tampered with in layman terms. Irrespective of how the data is written, exchanged, or processed, it remains untampered. 

Higher availability

When we talk about data, it’s not just statistics or financial numbers; it can be an image, text, or video file. Imagine how lower data availability will impact a streaming business? Every business needs higher data availability, which can be achieved through enhanced database systems with optimal security.

However, investing in data security can be a massive decision, and here is why you need it more than you think of it. 

Why is Data Security Important?

Data is the new currency, and keeping it secure means saving gold from pirates! Modern businesses are moving to digital platforms, and most transactions occur with one or the other type of data. So, ignoring data security is not an option anymore. Let’s understand it through some numbers,

  • 97% of businesses have suffered due to supply chain cybersecurity breaches(Venturebeat)
  • More than 52% of employees have been affected by security blunders due to stress(TechRepublic)
  • The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack was one of the biggest in 2021, which was settled in 75 bitcoin of $4 million in value(Wired)
  • There were 1,862 data breaches in 2021, which was the highest in comparison to 1,108 for 2020 and 1,507 for 2017(ITRC)
  • More than 40,099,751 healthcare-related information of patients were exposed to hackers in 2021(Healthcareitnews)

So, as you can see, whether you are building a giant cruise ship or delivering healthcare services, data security has become vital. With data breaches, not only does your business suffer as a brand, but the cost of system repairs, data recovery, and legal obligations make it a necessity. 

Now that you know why it’s essential, let’s discuss some critical technologies and data security trends.

Different Data Security Technologies

When considering a data security technology, you need to analyze your systems and organizational structure for enhanced integration. Once you have analyzed your system and critical requirements, the data security technologies that you can consider are, 

  • Data loss prevention technologies are effective means to monitor outgoing data from an organization to check whether there is no leakage of sensitive information.
  • Intrusion Detection System(IDS) monitors all the traffic that any organization receives and filters out malicious data for enhanced security.
  • Intrusion Prevention System(IPS) blocks the malicious traffic identified by IDS by removing the network packet, which is declared untrusted.
  • Security Incident and Event Management(SIEM) checks every event and reposts any malicious activity in real-time while maintaining proper documentation.
  • Firewalls help with port filtration and block malicious traffic-based security policies.
  • Data masking technology makes the information anonymous and hard for hackers to crack. 

Now that we know some of the data security technologies you can use for your businesses, upgrading them and keeping up with trends becomes vital. So, here are some key data security trends that every company needs to practice. 

Data Security Trends Every Modern Company Should Practice

Data encryption

Encryption technologies allow you to keep the data anonymous to hackers while exchanging between the user’s device and your system or a browser. There are two types of encryptions-” asymmetric and symmetric encryption.” 

While asymmetric encryptions have two different security keys ”public” and “private” for the encryption and decryption process, symmetric encryptions use the same key. However, the best approach is always to use them together, and SSL certificates cab the ideal choice. 

However, the usage of asymmetric cryptography is increased and to prevent cyber-attacks like data spying; a lengthy key is required. You can find 2048-bit equipped SSL certificate from branded SSL certificate authorities like Comodo SSL Certificate, GlobalSign SSL, RapidSSL Certificate etc. These certificates provide higher standards of encryption along with data integrity and privacy.

SSL certificates help establish HTTPS protocol and prevent data breaches through man-in-the-middle attacks. However, while SSL certification is a great way to ensure in-transit data protection, another critical data security trend is using multi-factor authentication. 

Multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication helps add an extra layer of security by validating user credentials. It can be in the form of a passcode, text message, and even a link that helps users authenticate the identity.  

Ensuring data security is vital, especially for cloud-based applications and shared databases. This is the reason why cloud services giants like Google and others are now using two-factor authentications or 2FA for user access to data. 

While authenticating your users is an excellent way to ensure data protection, the modern era of smart devices is challenging to have a secure experience.

IoT-based vulnerability

Over the years, smart devices have increased, leading to a new type of vulnerability, which hackers expose through malicious code injection in the APIs. Internet of Things devices uses APIs to exchange data with external machines or software. 

So IoT-based data security trend is essential for every business now as users access data from desktops and different intelligent devices these days. However, there is an advantage to intelligent technologies that can help data security through Artificial Intelligence(AI).

AI-based data security

AI-based cybersecurity systems are not new, but AI can be beneficial when you think about data security, monitoring networks, data behaviors, detecting anomalies, and finding key failure points in the system. You can find any irregularity in real-time and rectify systems to enhance data security with machine learning algorithms.

AI-based analytics also has a fundamental data security trend that has been popular due to insights that make information safety and protection easier. 

Understanding the trend is different, and implementing it to your business needs a reliable strategy. 

How to Implement a Data Security Strategy?

From identifying sensitive information to deciding the data policy, implementing a data security trend for your business needs proper strategy implementation. 

Identify sensitive data and classify it.

The first part of your data security strategy is analyzing the systems and finding sensitive data. Once you find all the sensitive data, it is important to classify them and further categorize the access levels through a data policy. 

Data Policy

Data policy is a set of rules or guidelines that the entire organization follows for permissions, access, and exchange of information. Once you have identified the sensitive data, forming a data policy becomes vital to ensure data protection.

Data Access

Further data access is a set of permission that allows users, employees, or third parties to access information. Who will access the data? These are vital questions answered through the data policy. Access depends on your security policies.

Safeguard your data

Safeguarding your data will take more than just deploying a security system; you will have to constantly measure network behavior, detect any unauthorized access and immediately act on it. For such a detailed monitoring practice, you will have to define every endpoint of the security system.

Use endpoint security systems.

Endpoint security systems help protect the entry points of users’ devices like smartphones, desktops, tablets, and more from malicious injections in the network. Here, you can use encryption-based security systems, WAFs, authentication, etc., to ensure no data breaches. However, you will need a risk-based approach for better overall security.

A risk-based approach to security

With a risk-based approach, you will have to, 

  • Prioritize information assets and processes
  • Identify risks and prioritize them.
  • Implement foundational security policies across assets
  • Build a targeted model of security for analysis
  • Develop a roadmap according to the analytical results
  • Ensure governance and organization engagement

The last part of the risk-based approach in governance, where employee training can do wonders!

Train your employees

Due to the pandemic, we have seen a shift towards the remorse working culture even before that. However, such a shift from a governance and security perspective without proper employee training. So, generate programs targeted towards employees for awareness on,

  • Security policies
  • Data access guidelines
  • Integrity maintenance
  • Critical security endpoints
  • Ways to improve compliance

Conclusion 

In the end, implementing a data security trend takes a lot of planning, analysis, execution, and monitoring across the organization. So, suppose you are looking to upgrade your security systems by integrating any trending technologies we discussed here. In that case, it is essential first to prioritize your assets, identify sensitive information, and have a proper backup to avoid any data loss.