Secured Data Storage
A secured data storage system is like a well protected vault with dynamic measures for guaranteeing that it stays secure. An unsecured vault, on the other hand, will be open or easily breakable, which defeats the entire purpose of attempting to keep intruders away from your valuables. This common sense example applies to property, identity, money, or anything else that you consider important. Unfortunately, some companies don’t make that a priority for backed up data and therefore tend to leave the vault open. There’s no reason to neglect common sense for data security and in fact, there should be more emphasis on it.
In 2007, the U.S had reported that 71% of companies encrypt and protect their data. While the majority do take these precautions, it still leaves us with a good 29% of those who don’t. The potential risks for such companies are numerous. Hackers could get a hold of this information and manage to shut down or be of great expense to the company. For example, Bank of America had lost some data due to a poor retention of security measures and the cost was no small matter. Losses due to poor security have been known to go up to $1 billion, as was the case with Morgan Stanley.
These are not risks anyone should be willing to take. A company that has poorly secured data not only puts themselves at risk but their customer’s privacy as well. In fact, data that is at rest is required to be encrypted and monitored by laws like the GLBA, HIPAA, and SOX. What these laws generally mandate is some sort of monitoring of server activity through system logs to prevent possible abuse, unauthorized access, maliciousness etc. By being aware of these dangers beforehand, companies are better equipped to quickly counter any problems before it actualizes.
These problems can all be avoided by starting to encrypt data with the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that is adopted and approved by the U.S government. Top secret files are used with the AES algorithm and there’s no reason why it should not be sufficient for your files either. This can be done by hand through compression tools like Winzip that offer that kind of encryption or in the case of online backups, providers will automatically encrypt all the data on their servers that even they cannot access. However, If you’re going to transmit data to servers online, then make sure that they offer “Secure Socket Layer” (SSL), which most do by default, to encrypt that connection. This prevents hackers from tampering or attempting to send malicious attacks through that connection.
Be as secure as possible and your business will have greatly decreased potential security risks and establish trust with customers. The easiest way to do this is to get a reliable online backup company to do all the work for you. They’ll have the necessary expertise to deal with these threats and make you aware of any that exist in a way that most companies simply won’t be able to do, or if they can, they can’t do it as well as them because they generally professionalize in such matters. Enjoy a peace of mind for your company by aiming to make security a priority.
Tags: Data Storage, Secured Data Storage
