It’s 10 p.m. Do you know if your data’s safe?
Protecting your data at every state is important, and that includes information going in and out of a business.
Data in transit is when clients’ most valuable data is also most vulnerable. Data protection has become even more crucial with pandemic-required remote work. Your data could be in danger with employees working from home on unsecured devices. Cybercriminals know this and they’re ready to pounce.
So how do you ensure data is protected at every stage? In this Channel Partners Virtual session, titled “Safeguard Data in Motion for the Business of Tomorrow (and Today),” March 2, an expert panel will discuss best practices for securing messages, files and other data in transit.
The panel includes IoTSSA’s director of channel, Robin Miller, and director of content, Brian Sherman; Tech Data’s director of security solutions, business development, Chris DesRosiers; and Privafy’s executive vice president and CTO, Kumar Vishwanathan.
In a Q&A with Channel Partners, DesRosiers gives a sneak peek of what he will share with attendees.
Channel Partners: How has the COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult for organizations to safeguard data?
Chris DesRosiers: The pandemic has forced hundreds of thousands of enterprises to rapidly move their employees to work remotely since March 2020. This has caused those employees, many of whom are in leadership positions, to take what would normally be confidential information home and connect back to the corporate infrastructure. This model has put severe stress on IT departments across the nation who need to rapidly implement secure connections, encrypted traffic, identity and access management systems, endpoint protection, updated home-based routers, operating systems and other controls. Unfortunately, this dramatic shift has yielded a bad result. Research group Canalys reports that 20 billion records were lost in 183 mega breaches in just the first nine months of 2020, the worst year on record.
CP: Why should securing data at every state be considered a top priority for businesses?
CD: The bad actors are now using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. They are very organized and are doing a very good job of exacting trillions of dollars per year from our global economy. There are numerous annual cybersecurity industry reports such as the Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) and many others that detail the devastating effects of these breaches. Data must be protected, given any state or condition, as a part of a larger security framework to reduce risk and loss of capital, intellectual property and reputations built over very long periods.
CP: Can you give some examples of best practices for safeguarding data?
CD: Key best practices for data include: controlling access to sensitive information by maintaining an inventory of sensitive information; encrypting sensitive data, and limiting access to authorized cloud and email providers; and not allowing shadow IT.
CP: Can safeguarding data give your organization a competitive advantage? If so, how?
CD: Supply-chain attacks are gaining in popularity. A very public and high-profile example of that is the recent SolarWinds attack that affected all parts of our national government, major international companies and potentially their suppliers. By implementing a robust security posture, enterprises can imbue confidence in their prospective business clients and partners versus their competitors who don’t make those security investments.
CP: What do you hope attendees learn and can make use of from this session?
CD: By attending, attendees will understand the definition of data security, the key risks involved, and the steps they can take for themselves and their clients. This help can be further extended by contacting the companies that the presenters represent who are in the business of helping the channel partners to solve these particular problems.