Data Protection - More Is More

Welcome back!  This is part next in our series about data security. Question…If you were tasked with protecting the crown jewels, would you simply put them in a box and consider them safe?  Probably not.  More likely would you add a lock to the box, put the box in a safe, build strong walls around the safe, add a high-tech security system, and create policies and procedures about who, what, when, where, and how they can be accessed.  In other words, you would use multiple layers of protection to keep the crown jewels safe. This is exactly how data security should be approached.  The data security gurus call this “defense in depth”. As discussed in the last post (Data – 101), data at any point in time is in one of three states (at rest, in use, in transit).  Each state requires different levels of security.  At a high level, the three most important layers are: Physical Security - Preventing people from accessing data they shouldn’t have access to (secures data at rest and in use) Data Security - Securing data stored on computers and networks (secures data at rest) Network Security - Protecting data as it moves from device to device or system to system (secures data in transit) Since data quickly moves from one state to another, it’s important these layers overlap so there aren’t any gaps.  Unplugged gaps and holes are how bad people gain access to good data.  In our next post, we’ll dig deeper in the topic of physical security and identify the types of tools that are used to prevent data loss at this layer.