Security 

Competitive Advantage: Secure Data

By Paresh Amin, Senior Director of Security and Compliance, Tizor , 04/16/2007

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If you follow the news, you know that this is the era of data theft and data regulation. Incidents of mass identity theft occur on a regular basis and legislators have passed literally dozens of laws aimed at controlling how businesses handle sensitive data-financial, consumer and other. These are signs of changing times, where the definition of a valuable asset has evolved to include the information stored in business data centers all over the world. Data is not only an essential part of doing business in the twenty first century it also has a black market street value-like a precious stone or a luxury car, but much more portable. This street value is driving a new generation of thieves who target information from Social Security and credit card numbers to account numbers and passwords. Electronic information is at greater risk than ever before.

In response to this risk, information with any sensitivity or value is now being regulated. And regulation is forcing companies to pay close attention to information assets-including where they are and what is happening to them. The main demand that regulators are making is that businesses have enough visibility into information assets to know what's going on- so that they can identify when something goes wrong and have enough information to right it. In fact, visibility is the underlying requirement of every information protection law from SOX, the Payment Card Industry standard (PCI), Gramm-Leach-Bliley, HIPAA and the European Privacy Directive.

Complying with data-focused regulations has become a huge part of doing business and considering that virtually all corporate information is linked to IT systems and data stores, technology plays a huge role. Establishing adequate controls over what happens to critical corporate information is a major challenge, because businesses rely on easy access to data to stay competitive. Creating a balance between enabling business, through easy access to data, and protecting information, by making sure that only the right people access the right data for the right reasons, is the end goal.

So how do companies ensure data protection and privacy in the age of smart thieves and wider access to information in corporate data centers? The first step is to take a different view of data. Recognizing data as a critical corporate asset helps in visualizing how it should be protected. After all, every company has clear guidelines for how they should handle their money, including processes for who can access that money, and what they can and cannot do with it. In addition, they have processes for how those funds are tracked, documented and reported.

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