News
COMMENT: Data Privacy Day: data security in the age of hyper-connectivity
January 2022 by Steven Wood, Director, EMEA, APAC, Carbonite + Webroot Webroot
As part of Data Privacy Day, the comments from Steven Wood, Director, EMEA, APAC, Carbonite + Webroot, on data security in the age of hyper-connectivity.
“While technology has rapidly transformed the way we work during the pandemic, cyber-attacks have also increased in their complexities and sophistication. To manage the new complexity in cyber-attacks, organisations are shaping their privacy strategy around hybrid and ‘work from anywhere’ (WFA) models.
According to a report by cyber security ventures, the total amount of data stored in both public and private cloud is predicted to reach 100 zettabytes by 2025. As digital citizens, as we continue to operate in a digitally interconnected world, the damage that cybercrime and data breach could inflict will ripple across our business and personal lives. With evolving data regulations and GDPR set to become increasingly stringent, business leaders must now review their data protection policies as an integral part of their privacy strategy.
Therefore, to mark data privacy day, organisations should inculcate a culture of cybersecurity awareness across their data protection procedures, starting by regularly training their staff and building an understanding of the impact data leaks could have on their customers and fellow employees.
Though education and diligent data classification, businesses can then invest in proper data protection to satisfy compliance needs and thereby help to keep ahead of privacy standards required by their industry. Businesses should also make sure that their backup data are encrypted and immutable – they should have restricted access, be properly configured, and be tested regularly. This can help to ensure organizations avoid stepping into the unwanted spotlight of data breach and disastrous privacy violations.
When it comes to ensuring data privacy for individuals, the same rules apply. Investing in protecting your frontline data with features like message encryption from reliable services like Zix should be complimented with a reliable backup service that leverages end-to-end encryption and above all takes privacy seriously.
We all need to keep data private, and it’s not just the data we interact with every day, it’s also critical to extend data privacy to what’s stored in our backup copies as well.”
