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Data is the lifeblood of organizations. It drives decision-making, fosters innovation, and underpins business operations. However, this wealth of data is scattered across multiple cloud platforms, making it an attractive target for cybercriminals, and rendering traditional approaches to data protection obsolete. This is where data-centric security comes into play. This article will explore the concept of data-centric security, why businesses need it, and the benefits it offers.
Understanding data-centric security
Data-centric security is a comprehensive approach to safeguarding sensitive data by focusing on the data itself rather than the network or perimeter. It revolves around protecting data throughout its lifecycle, ensuring that even if security perimeters are breached, the data remains secure.
Data-centric security comprises several key components and principles, including:
- Data discovery and classification: Identifying and categorizing data based on its sensitivity is the first step in protecting it. By knowing what data is most critical, you can allocate resources and protection measures accordingly.
- Access controls and permissions: Fine-grained access controls and role-based permissions are essential to restrict data access to authorized users and roles, reducing the risk of data exposure.
- Encryption: Encrypting data at rest and in transit adds an extra layer of protection, making data inaccessible to unauthorized individuals.
- Activity monitoring: Real-time activity monitoring and auditing capabilities help detect unusual data access or transfer patterns, allowing for immediate response to potential security incidents.
- Incident response and mitigation: Effective incident response is crucial in case of a breach or unauthorized access, enabling quick identification of the issue and mitigating any damage.
Why businesses need data-centric security
The amount of data being used by organizations for day-to-day operations is increasing rapidly. The importance of adopting a data-centric approach to data protection can be summarized into three main reasons:
- Traditional security is insufficient.
- Apply granular access controls.
- Integrate with existing tech stack.
Benefits of data-centric security
As data becomes increasingly valuable as a competitive advantage, organizations have increased their cybersecurity spending. Investing in data-centric security controls offers many benefits, which are outlined below.
- Lower data protection costs
- A secure remote workforce
- Improve security at the file level
- Platform-agnostic data security
How to create a data-centric security model
Creating a genuine data-centric security model requires adopting a defense-in-depth strategy that encloses data in successive layers of security. Defense-in-depth provides sufficient redundancies that act as barricades of increasing complexity from one layer of security to the next.
Data discovery and classification
To build a comprehensive data-centric model, the first step is to inventory your organization’s data across its ecosystem. It is essential to know where your data is located and how it is stored before implementing any security measures. Next, correctly classify this data to understand its value and prioritize the level of protection it deserves. Security administrators can then deploy accurate protection measures for each category of data.
Identity and access management (IAM)
Data governance
Data loss prevention (DLP)
Data-centric security is a vital approach to protecting sensitive data in an increasingly interconnected world. It not only safeguards your critical assets but also helps with compliance, intellectual property protection, and reducing the impact of data breaches. By following the guidelines for selecting data-centric security tools and solutions, organizations can fortify their data defenses and maintain a strong competitive edge in today’s digital landscape.
Invest in data-centric security measures to secure your organization’s most valuable asset: its data.