Data security remains the big issue

By Kelvin Lim, Regional Director, Southeast Asia, Check Point Software Technologies | Jan 28, 2010

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The loss of laptops, memory sticks, smartphones and other portable equipment storing private information is often inevitable; therefore, having an encryption solution on these devices is paramount to the security of today’s mobile society. The criminal population today has changed its efforts from the once traditional means of stealing to a more tech savvy method of stealing data from organizations and agencies for monetary and personal gain, with significant financial consequences. 

According to the Ponemon Institute, companies experiencing a data breach incur an average total cost of $6.6 million per breach, a figure that keeps rising. Over the past few years, data breach occurrences are wider publicized as new laws have been created and public awareness of these types of crimes have become more known.

Government agencies need to take a proactive approach to data security by encrypting and protecting all corporate data. Deploying data encryption solutions to protect both “data at rest” and “in transit”, and doing so on all company endpoints, is an example of taking a proactive approach to data security. If your organization’s encryption solutions are inconsistent and don’t encrypt all devices and data within that organization, then your network and information aren’t secure and your organization is at risk.

In 2008 The Identity Theft Resource Center reported that only 2.4% of the devices that encountered a data breach had encryption or other strong protection method in use, and only 8.5% of reported breaches had password protection. It is obvious that the bulk of leaked data was unprotected by either encryption or passwords.

Implementation of a data security policy and deployment of encryption solutions are major factors in how secure an organization’s data is from outside threats and hackers. A common factor in the data breaches that have been occurring over the past few years is that organizations do not have an agency-wide data encryption policy rolled out. They may have some of their computers secured with an encryption solution, but the remaining computers are without, thus leaving a window of vulnerability. The vast majority of the data breaches found on ITRC’s 2008 report result from lost or stolen laptops, which could easily have been circumvented if proper encryption solutions were in place.

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