Defenses and dangers: Understanding your data protection needs

The value of business data is constantly changing, and more so every year. Data used to consist of a few names and email addresses, some purchasing information and some contact details gleaned from badge-scans at the last event attended. As such, it was only valuable at certain times and rarely viewed as business critical. Fast forward to today, this has changed. Now, the quality and quantity of data that is stored directly contributes to business success on many different levels. Some organizations are  ‘mining data’ for information or creating ‘data lakes’ using customer data which can then be used to understand purchasing patterns and attempt to predict future opportunities.

Combine this with the number of data sources that can be mined for information – not just traditional website and email – but also social media accounts, news articles, even internal IoT and industrial IoT that can be monitored to make more effective use of equipment. Together, all of these sources provide important data and have become the lifeblood of a modern organization.

Why It Matters

What this all means is that protecting data has become more important than ever. Yes, there are global regulations which have made us look at what data is being held and ensure it is well protected, but this importance is about more than regulations – it’s also relevant as data is intellectual property, it’s the information which makes an organization unique. Organizations that fail to protect it run the risk of exposing proprietary information, enabling third-party organizations to take advantage and turn their business strengths into possible weaknesses.

By Laurence Pitt

Published with permission from forums.juniper.net/t5/Blogs/ct-p/blogs