In the same way an organization takes care of its employees, customers, and finances, it also needs to ensure its sensitive data is well protected. For comprehensive data security, organizations need to add a layer of protection so that each stage of data is protected throughout its journey for end-to-end security.
Ideally, your data protection strategy should include solutions that can understand and classify your data, detect and prevent leaks, and secure and protect data both at rest and in motion.
People, process, and technology all play a key role. To reduce risk and meet data protection and privacy regulations, safeguarding methods need to include a combination of access, security, and organizational controls. Access to sensitive data needs to be restricted both physically and online. Systems, networks, and applications need the appropriate administrative and security controls, and employees need policies that allow them to understand and implement industry best practices.
What is Data Protection?
Data protection is the process of safeguarding important information from theft or loss. These actions can be malicious or unintentional, but a robust data protection program will protect against both.
A large part of data protection is ensuring that data is accessible for authorized purposes only, as well as being compliant with necessary regulatory requirements.
Every day the data that businesses are creating and storing is growing. With hybrid work environments making remote collaboration a reality of daily business, and companies choosing to migrate technology to the cloud for both cost-saving and efficiency purposes, enterprise data protection is more important than ever to protect data regardless of where it is or how it is used.
Data protection programs can be primarily focused on two broad uses—ensuring protection and auditing of regulated data such as PCI, PII, or PHI, or protecting the intellectual property organizations rely upon to expand their business. Any program must balance the needs of protection with the risks of sharing. Overly aggressive programs can stifle business processes, while overly lenient programs can lead to excessive risk.
Data Protection vs. Data Security
The terms data protection and data security are often used interchangeably, and while there are similarities,
there are also important differences between the two.
Data Protection
Data Security
What is Data Privacy?
Data privacy, at its most basic, is defined as the appropriate use of data. When data is entrusted to an organization, it is to be used only according to the purposes agreed upon.
Data privacy and protection laws are becoming increasingly more commonplace across the US, with different states introducing new regulations. Ensuring data privacy is prioritized at your organization can help prevent misuse that can result in substantial financial and reputational costs.
Incorporating data protection solutions enterprise-wide can provide the layered security needed to ensure data privacy and protection policies enacted can be carried out.
Data Security and Data Privacy
What Is Data Privacy Important?
Cloud Data Protection
What Is Cloud Data Protection?
Cloud data protection uses tools and techniques to protect cloud-based data, wherever that data is located, including data at rest or in motion, and data managed internally or by third parties.
Why Prioritize Data Protection in the Cloud?
Data protection within cloud environments is becoming a crucial task as more businesses are transitioning data to the cloud, and storing data in locations that introduce some complexities, from simple public and private cloud repositories to more complex architectures such as hybrid clouds, multiclouds, and software as a service (SaaS) platforms.
The Challenges:
The increased demand from data protection and privacy regulations, coupled with the complexity of cloud architectures, create challenges such as:
- Visibility – difficulty in keeping an accurate inventory of all applications and data
- Access – third-party hosted applications have less controls than on premise, making it more difficult to have full visibility of user activity, and how data is being used
- Control – cloud vendors offer “shared responsibility” which means while users gain control over some security aspects, others remain within the scope of the vendor and users are unable to ensure security
- Inconsistencies – differing cloud platforms offer different capabilities, which can lead to inconsistencies in cloud protection and security
A Proactive Approach
The use of a cloud service does not mean that the cloud provider is responsible for your data, therefore, business must take a proactive approach to data protection within cloud environments.
Data Protection Solutions from Fortra
Organizations rely on sensitive data to serve their customers, fuel innovation, and grow. Security leaders need a way to find and understand that data, then protect it from loss or theft while within their extended enterprise and securely share it outside of their extended enterprise.
Fortra's leading data protection offering delivers interlocking security for all cybersecurity maturity levels. Our modular solutions for cloud access security broker (CASB), data classification, data loss prevention (DLP), data security posture management (DSPM), and secure collaboration combine to address your immediate needs and use cases, as well as advise your next best steps as your security program evolves.
CASB
CASB acts like a security guard for cloud applications, positioned between your employees and the cloud apps they use. Fortra monitors cloud activity and keeps data safe by making sure the right people have access to the right data, stopping risky behavior, and monitoring unsanctioned cloud app usage so employees don’t use unsafe tools.
Data Loss Prevention
Fortra DLP deploys and starts fast to give you immediate visibility into your data security, intuitive results in out-of-the-box dashboards, and greater deployed efficacy. From discovery to monitoring to blocking, comprehensive data loss prevention capabilities help support compliance initiatives and protect against serious risk while guiding users on the next-best security step. SaaS and managed service deployment options help deliver results faster and give you the expertise you need.
Data Classification
Fortra Data Classification solutions enhance data security by applying visual and metadata labels so you can best support DLP policies. AI engine recommendations help reduce business friction by guiding which label is best to apply, and employees receive real-world security training that drives visibility and engagement with data security practices across the organization.
DSPM
Fortra DSPM serves as a security system for your company’s cloud data, protecting commonly used applications like Google Drive, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. Understand where all your data lives, what kind of data it is (sensitive or not), who has access to it, and whether it's being protected properly.
Secure Collaboration
Fortra Secure Collaboration encrypts and controls access to sensitive files wherever they go. Taking a Zero Trust approach to file sharing, collaboration with anyone—external or internal—is always quick and secure, with the option to revoke access instantly at any time.
The Ultimate Guide to Data Protection
Protecting data is paramount to business success. Download this guide to learn what data protection is, why it's so critical, and how businesses can better protect the data they store and process.
