The struggle to protect enterprise data
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Long ago, when businesses kept sensitive information locked away in file cabinets and safes, it was relatively cheap and easy to store valuable data and control who had access to it. Today, enterprises invest millions in security, storage, and compliance technologies -- all in the name of increasing visibility into where vital electronic information lives and how it is being defended.
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Monitoring systems on the central LAN for personal and proprietary data â something industry analysts estimate 86 percent of companies must do to comply with one or more regulations, such as GLBA, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley â is already an enormous challenge. Then consider the extra complexities introduced as this content sprawls to remote offices and partner locations.
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With the EU crafting new laws governing how data collectors such as Google protect users' personal data, lawmakers there are clashing with US business leaders over how far that protection can and should extend.
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(InfoWorld) - Technologies aimed at bolstering enterprise data protection remain tough to manage, but companies can derive significant benefits if they utilize the tools with a pragmatic approach, said security industry experts. A recurring theme among the consultants, technology makers, and customers gathered for the InfoWorld Enterprise Data Protection Forum being held in New York today was that the first step businesses looking to improve their information defenses must take is to locate and evaluate all of their truly vital records. Beyond that assessment process, having the ability to centralize efforts to drive data protection tools and strategies across their entire organizations is a key to their success, the experts said. From encryption technologies to DLP (data leakage prevention) systems, companies are faced with a range of alternatives for addressing their information management and security needs. Finding the right way to apply the various tools is one of the most crucial issues for most companies today in making headway with their data protection projects, industry watchers observed. "Unified management is the key; if you look at how you manage this process, you must have a top-down view into operations," said Phillip Dunkelberger, chief executive at encryption specialists PGP. "Most enterprises are trying to solve these problems with point solutions, but that's like playing whack-a-mole; you must look at this issue universally from protecting laptops to archiving and tape backup as well as in managing your custom applications." As external threats continue to evolve and businesses are presented with new security concerns like smaller, more powerful removable storage drives, IT security teams must try to adopt technologies that will allow them to take a more centralized approach, compared to individual point products, Dunkelberger maintains. The PGP executive unsurprisingly expressed his belief that the careful application of encryption technologies across an enterprise, among other tools, can provide just the type of top-down, metered approach he recommends. Installing and supporting all the various pieces needed to improve data protection remains one of the most challenging tasks for enterprises to handle, he said. "Operations teams have to make these systems work, and work cost effectively -- they need to know who to report to if there is a breach and how to respond to it," said Dunkelberger. "If you think about the future, there is a need to be more transparent to gain customers and at the same time protect their information; there's a need to shift thinking and methodology," said the CEO. "We can't do the same work over and over again. We need to take the opportunity to look at new technologies and sit down with our business partners to advance a plan." Other experts speaking at the conference said that enterprises are finally realizing that they can no longer focus on perimeter defenses alone to protect their sensitive information and that customers are getting a grip on the notion of defending data assets and intellectual capital versus merely attempting to better lock-down their networks. Gerrit Nel, global data security solutions and services development manager at IBM's Global Technology Services group, said that companies should focus on employing endpoint-based technologies that can handle DLP and other security policies. "It's better to return to the approach of addressing things at the endpoint and then building protections back into the network," said Nel. "Companies need to start looking at the value of the entire data chain; there's a need to get rid of the user aspect of data governance and inform people what they can and cannot do. Endpoints can be multi-user and data can be saved on removable devices, and there's a need for solutions to protect and encrypt data there as a result of those factors." While many enterprise customers already complain that they have too many endpoint-based technologies in place that create management complexity issues, companies should reconsider what they have installed and look to apply newer tools that offer the same type of centralized management espoused by PGP's Dunkelberger, Nel said. Another emerging concern for managing data protection is the emergence of SOA strategies within many areas of enterprise IT, said the expert. Having the ability to push governance policies across those systems will be one key to allowing for the benefits of SOA in the future without creating new security hazards, Nel said. "Many of the solutions we see today are based on SOA-type architecture and exploit Web services, so we recommend that when looking at solutions companies ensure that they can integrate those applications with their existing business applications and feed their policies in," he said. "Look for vendors that can really help solve these problems and not just point solutions aimed at addressing one part of the process."
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The trials and tribulations of application dependency in a virtualized, hosted world.
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Every month seems to bring another episode of sensitive personal information escaping into the wild because a corporate or government laptop computer is lost or stolen. A common response is a lot of hand-wringing over how the data should have been encrypted.
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Every security professional is intimately familiar with the Law of Unintended Consequences; sometimes it even works in their favor. Case in point? The data-protection advances that RxHub needed to build to protect their real-time data-transport operation.
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Grid architecture aims to protect corporate networks from interior security threats.
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There's a lot of data out there, but using it wisely is a challenge. In this Executive Briefing, we look at the theory and practice of data-driven decision making. We hear from experts and examine successful implementations of information management technologies.
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The leading vendors in the data warehousing market are running scared of new entrants to the market that are offering data warehouse appliances (i.e. pre-integrated hardware, software, storage combinations) that can offer greatly superior performance at a significantly lower price.  In this white paper we will dispel the 'fog of war' that currently pervades the data warehousing landscape, dismissing those question marks that are irrelevant and gratuitous, but highlighting any genuine issues that need to be addressed.
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This article discusses the discovery of compromised machines in large enterprise environments, and offers some suggestions on correlating NIDS and HIPS logs to avoid false positives.
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Most large companies are struggling to protect themselves against security threats, a survey from security consultancy NetSec published today reveals.
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Sure, you need to protect yourself, but in doing so, you can reap tremendous business benefits by more active use of the data.
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(Source: Imprivata)  Studies show that nearly 80% of publicized data breaches come from internal sources. This Imprivata webinar explains how a converged physical access and IT security strategy, with Imprivata OneSign", can ensure that you are actively defending your enterprise from insider threat while also addressing regulatory compliance.
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It takes effort and intelligence to keep personal information out of the hands of people and governments bent on misusing the data.
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(Source: Plasmon)  In this white paper, Heidi Biggar of Enterprise Strategy Group discusses the ideal solution that creates a multi-tiered active archive for cost-effective, long-term accessibility to compliance data.   According to Biggar, organizations cannot continue keeping non-transactional data on primary storage systems. Archive platforms make better economic sense. Download this white paper to learn more!
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Big companies exploring ways to verify identities online