Is Your Data Safe?

Is your data safe? The answer and people’s perception might surprise you. According to a Pew Research article published on May 20th. When it comes to privacy, security, and, surveillance, many American’s believe their data is not under control. “…they are under surveillance when in public and very few feel they have a great deal of control over the data that is collected about them and how it is used.”

As more and more data gets accessible across mobile devices that can be stolen and beyond the physical security of enterprise walls; via cloud services; and distributed under the stewardship of various companies using various risk assessments, having technical aptitude, and wide ranging security policies and practices in place, huge amounts of data is out there with varying degrees of risk. Certainly with laws like Sarbanes Oxley that requires data retention a minimum of 7 years. The average data breach costs a company about $3.8 Million according to Security Intelligence.

The business of data management and security has become a multi-billion dollar industry. In a time where data is created, sent, and stored on mobile devices that can be stolen the security risks are high. We see a multitude of companies perform security audits, build out state of the art infrastructure, yet still have data breaches. And since the data is in the public vs behind private infrastructure and physical security, just makes these problems more complex to solve.

Recently, there has been a string of data breaches within the healthcare insurance industry. Identity thieves are making a direct assault at Private Health Information (PHI) because it is a treasure trove of details about an individual beyond just credit card information that can be cancelled within hours of a breach. This allows crooks to get prescription data can be used to obtain controlled substances to be sold on the black markets . It has been widely reported that the FBI even went so far to issue a private industry notification (PIN) in 2014, basically warning healthcare providers that their cyber security protocols are not sufficiently secure when compared to other industries such as financial and retail sectors. The security breaches are still being reported today. It’s also been reported that criminals will pay $1,000 per individual for this PHI data and when millions of records are stolen, there is big money at stake for the criminals.

In the end, the key is choosing your partners, vendors, integrators, and service providers wisely whether you’re the end consumer or making decision on behalf of a company. It wise to do your homework up front, check for current best practices, and leverage solutions done in other industries to leap frog the competition in your respective industry . Big Data is also becoming a Big Target and ultimately the fiduciary responsibility follows the life of whoever touches and stores the data. Finding solutions and delivering real world results is where we thrive and can help.