What Is an Organization’s Cybersecurity Stance or Posture?
An organization’s cybersecurity stance, or posture, is the current security status of all its hardware, software, services, information, networks, and service providers. This stance encompasses a wide variety of security measures, including data security, network security, penetration testing, training against cybersecurity attacks, vulnerability management, secure file transfers, data breach prevention, and more.
Obviously, the better an organization’s cybersecurity stance, the better it can withstand the ever-increasing savvy of cybercriminals. These hackers are determined to install malware that results in ransomware threats and even steal the data that is so very valuable to an organization’s well-being and to that of its customers and trading partners, not to mention its reputation.
What Is Data Security?
In its broadest definition, data security is how organizations identify and protect sensitive data to ensure it stays secure and controlled throughout the entire data security lifecycle. In an organization or enterprise, data security should be approached as both a state of mind, and as a concrete collection of tactics and software solutions deployed to protect data throughout its journey.
Achieving and maintaining data security is a complex but vital mission of any IT operation as untold volumes of a huge variety of data types and sizes are exchanged daily. This data often migrates in a hybrid IT environment and in many organizations, with a remote workforce in play. That’s a big lift.
Fortunately, there are solutions designed to protect and control the data that is the lifeblood of most organizations from inception to its final destination or destruction. Assembling and layering an array of data security solutions can simplify and automate how organizations protect the valuable data entrusted to them as it travels in and out of its networks.
Robust data security is an expectation today. Regulated industries, customers, patients, vendors, and others have the right to expect organizations to handle their data properly, adhere to compliance standards, and to manage and control data whether it is at rest, in motion, or in use.
Get the Guide: Data Security Use Cases
How Do Data Security Solutions Work to Boost Cybersecurity?
The assorted data security solutions an organization assembles help IT teams know what type of data they have, where it is, how data is shared, and most importantly, who has access to it. The solutions should work together to deliver both visibility and security around data.
Data security tools or solutions can target the prevention of accidental or intentional unapproved access to data, as well as protect the data itself, not just the perimeter around it. Today, organizations can choose to deploy their data security solutions on-premises, in the cloud, or as SaaS options for more flexibility around their cybersecurity efforts.
Data Security Solutions from Fortra
An organization can use layers of data security solutions designed to ease and bolster their cybersecurity stance with the ultimate goal of helping to ensure data privacy, proper data handling, achieving and maintaining compliance, and control of data through all its stages.
Fortra's data security solutions suite includes tools to help you understand and classify data needing protection, detect threats and prevent leaks, as well as solutions to help you secure and protect data at rest and in motion, wherever that data is (on-premises or in the cloud) and wherever it travels for end-to end-security.
Data Classification Helps Prioritize Data Needing Data Security Protection
Not all data needs elevated protection. However, organizations that must abide by compliance regulations or industry standards, such as healthcare, government, finance, and any business that accepts payment cards know that applying strong safeguards to data containing anything that could potentially be sensitive or personally identifiable at all stages is imperative to avoiding fines, censure, or data breaches.
Data classification sets the baseline for a solid data security strategy as it classifies, identifies, and prioritizes the data most in need of protection, including unstructured data like intellectual property. With one of our data classification solutions in place, you get the management and control of your data needed to help meet stringent compliance requirements and serve as a tool to help your users consider what information they are sending out. Data classification combines visual labels applied to data as well as labels applied to the file’s meta data for protection and control.
Related Reading: Data Classification Best Practices
Encryption is Essential for Maintaining a Solid Cybersecurity Stance
When data is encrypted for its protection at rest and in motion, your business-critical or sensitive information cannot be accessed or used in the wrong hands. If, despite all measures taken to prevent a breach, one occurs, encryption solutions limit how much of an impact a breach can actually have, as the data cannot be decrypted without an authorized key.
While encryption is a big headache for those who want to access your data without authorization, Organizations maintaining and enhancing a robust cybersecurity program that includes encryption solutions that can easily be integrated with existing business technology and processes can gain peace-of-mind. Solutions that are easier to use are ones that actually get used.
Data Loss Prevention Delivers Visibility and Control
Enterprise DLP protects the endpoints across your entire corporate network, as well as its cloud applications, to detect and block any threats to your sensitive data. Our Enterprise-level Data Loss Prevention solution is delivered as a SaaS option, powered by AWS, to give you protection without the complexity.
Secure and Manage File Transfers with MFT
Sending the thousands of files in and out of an organization while maintaining security, compliance, and data privacy requires a secure managed file transfer (MFT) solution. Fortra's MFT solutions can automate the file transfer processes through a centralized platform with built-in security and encryption protocols, auditing and reporting functionality, as well as full transparency on file status. Fortra file transfer options also include an accelerated file transfer solution for files requiring higher speeds of transmission, such as real-time broadcasts from anywhere without latency or packet loss.
To add security to file transfers, MFT Threat Protection combines Fortra MFT solutions with our Secure ICAP Gateway, allowing every file sent through MFT to be inspected and sanitized before traveling onward.
Get Your Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Investing in Secure File Transfer Software
Maintain Control of Data Wherever it Travels with Rights Management
Once you’ve sent an encrypted file through a secure managed file transfer solution you trust it’s in good hands, right? Well, you might want to think again. Once unencrypted, a file sent, and the data contained in it, could land in the wrong hands. By applying a digital rights management (DRM) solution to your files you can secure, track, audit, and revoke access to your sensitive data, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and intellectual property.
Combining the simplicity and security of sending files with MFT with the continued protection secured with rights management is a good cybersecurity combination to ensure the files you send are controlled and protected wherever they may end up.
Related Reading: Fortra's Digital Rights Management + Managed File Transfer
Email Security is Vital to Maintaining Data Security
With those convenient email inboxes constantly being filled, refilled and emptied, the risks of this handy tool being hit with cyberattacks, spear phishing attempts, or malicious email threats are high. The good news is, Fortra has several email security solutions that can push back against cybercriminals trying to enter your system via email. Our solutions can automatically redact, sanitize, delete, block, or monitor data according to your established policies to keep business processes flowing with non-flagged data continuing on its journey so business doesn’t grind to a halt. Our DMARC email authentication solution even helps protect your customers and trading partners from those email spoofs trying to pass themselves off as coming from you and your organization.
Digital Risk Protection
For comprehensive protection against external cyberthreats, account takeovers, brand impersonation attempts, data leakage, and more, Fortra Digital Risk Protection delivers threat intelligence and mitigation with a comprehensive solution. Threat-specific technology within the solution is activated as different threats require different approaches for identification and mitigation.
Related Reading: Social Media Attacks Targeting Businesses Increase 105%
Need Ideas to Boost Your Cybersecurity Stance?
One of our data security experts would be happy to chat with you about your organization’s unique data security needs.