- By Nathan Riley -
Businesses must report regularly on the stability and security standing of their data. It is critical to ensure that important company data is not lost. If businesses do not know what or where their data is, the organization becomes susceptible to compliance audit failures, loss of critical data not backed up or even worse – being maliciously attacked by hackers with absolutely no awareness.
What is a Data Discovery?
Data discovery is a process handled by business analysis technologies that are implemented identify all existing data silos within an organization.
Avoid Attacks and Audit Failures – Be Aware
Businesses can gain significantly more control over their digital landscape by becoming capable of identifying open active connections, transfers, failures and beyond. This is achievable through implementing technologies such as SIEM, network monitors, and various environmental scanners.
Companies such as Equifax, Sony, Chipotle, Target, TJ Max and many more fell victim to a lack of environmental awareness, that resulted in catastrophic damage to their brands and overall reputations.
Regardless of a company's capacity to bounce back from PR disasters around breach of data, new data regulations require even more stringent control over digital information.
For example, compliance failures with PCI-DSS can result in companies becoming unable to no longer be capable of receiving credit card payments. Failures with GDPR compliance can disable a companies capacity to do international business, or face potential jail time. HIPAA failures can put organizations out of business entirely, also with a threat of jail time.
If a company is aware of every single data silo in their business, alongside having active monitoring with alerts for all unexpected connections and transfers, the digital landscape becomes drastically less concerning. Remember that skilled cyber attackers know exactly what they are targeting to steal from your organization, so it is crucial for your team to at least know what needs to be defended.
Companies Should Strive to:
- Sort out a list of all available business data infrastructure
- Maintain a list of all outside vendors who have access to infrastructure
- Establish a full-time team to manage live monitoring
- Build a policy to ensure data discovery is maintained with every new environmental update
- A control system for bringing in new data infrastructure
- Establish a strong security awareness program
- Situate ongoing collaboration between data compliance and cyber security teams
- Get data discovery results as soon as possible
Companies Should Aim to Avoid:
- Catastrophic loss of customer and business data (no backup policy in place)
- Complete unawareness of outside connections
- Not harboring a network map of every available host to the business that contains operational data to any capacity
- A lack of live system monitoring and alerting
- Absolutely no malware control policy
- Missing a risk assessment
- Lack of a password and access policy
- Missing a third party vendor control policy
Resolve These Issues Now
Any company who is serious about moving toward 2020 with no data discover will need to start taking action now. With data infrastructure expanding at exponential rates, the longer businesses wait to situate their digital landscape to meet compliance and Cybersecurity reporting needs, the closer organizations are to receiving significant fines or even having to close their doors for good.
Soon, notiaPoint will be releasing more content and guidance to help businesses navigate these issues. Regardless, please prepare your business for the future by initiating your own data discovery.