Interconnectivity is essential to industry but greater connectivity can present data security challenges that expose an organisation’s vulnerability.
With increased use of sophisticated technology such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, interconnectivity is key to keeping a business operational. But the more you connect, the greater your attack surface area and resulting data security risks.
“To be able to safely and securely support interconnectivity, the right kind of ICT infrastructure is vital,” said Maria Bell, senior research analyst at CCS Insight. “It needs to be intelligent to proactively and contextually surface insights to help secure and protect an organisation and the country.”
Security and privacy must be a front of mind concern and be embedded throughout to allow for end to end continuous protection, and always on approach towards security and privacy will help to mitigate the impact from an ever evolving threat landscape and the actions of more versatile threat actors.
“Networks need good design and architecture, along with equipment that can be flexibly configured and extended through software programming, thus addressing security concerns by embedding resilience into a management and governance,” added Bell. “Network infrastructures that are not built to support mobile technologies and location based services are often responsible for application failures and poor operating performance. It is therefore important to apply a structured architecture to a network topology, ensuring separate physical logistical, logical networks according to the nature of the traffic they carry.”
Automation is also crucial for secure operations, especially for administering fixes insurance compliance with the latest security policies, and notify when an issue arises or a policy is breached. So remediation can take place.
“Interconnectivity combines workforces and technology to improve workflows. It enhances organisations accountability, helping to improve business transparency and customer experience. It successfully allows a business to operate more efficiently and increase productivity, ultimately driving return on investment and achieving profits. There is no doubt that the myriad benefits far outweigh the dangers and businesses need to remember that with the right policies and sound infrastructure in place data security risks can be minimised.”
A recent survey of industry by the Data Protection Index highlighted key data protection compliance challenges over the next 12 months.
Data retention ranked as the biggest GDPR compliance concern with 29 per cent of respondents identifying it as their organisations’ top compliance challenge for the next 12 months. The second biggest GDPR compliance challenge was international data transfers with 18 per cent of respondents identifying this as their organisations’ top compliance challenge.
A third of respondents identified the European Data Protection Board’s (EDPB) October Guidelines on personal data breaches under GDPR that requires organisations to notify personal data breaches to every single authority as a major problem for their organisation.
Finally, privacy and data protection experts were set a malware encryption attack scenario with a ransom for the return of access. The proportion of respondents saying that their organisation would pay a ransom fell from 26 per cent to 17 per cent, suggesting a hardening of positions amongst companies regarding cyber attacks.
