Q&A: Data security and decentralisation

How has the role of data evolved in organ­i­sa­tions over recent years?

In this dig­i­tal-first world, increas­ing amounts of data are being pro­duced, shared and destroyed every sec­ond. Tech­nolo­gies to analyse vast vol­umes of data have also evolved with the result that many organ­i­sa­tions rely on data for mean­ing­ful insights and to take the right deci­sions.

While some organ­i­sa­tions still have a cen­tralised approach to data – where employ­ees work in the office and access data through secure servers – more and more busi­ness­es are adopt­ing a decen­tralised approach. Now, employ­ees are work­ing remote­ly, access­ing data from their own unse­cured devices.

What has been the impact of decen­tral­i­sa­tion and remote work­ing?

The pan­dem­ic cre­at­ed an era of forced, rapid dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion insti­gat­ing a nec­es­sary rise in remote work­ing. Accord­ing to Buffer’s 2022 State of Remote Work study, more than 95% of work­ers still want to work remote­ly at least for some time. But decen­tral­is­ing means busi­ness­es must democ­ra­tise their data.

This requires easy access to data ana­lyt­ics which is dri­ving deci­sion-mak­ing, lead­ing to increased data stor­age and man­age­ment require­ments. The key to suc­cess for mod­ern busi­ness­es is uni­fy­ing data access and data shar­ing across busi­ness func­tions. Using data to auto­mate and inte­grate work­flows is one of the core ben­e­fits of a dig­i­tal-first world. But the great chal­lenge for mod­ern busi­ness­es is how they democ­ra­tise their data with­out com­pro­mis­ing its secu­ri­ty.

What are the data secu­ri­ty chal­lenges in such an envi­ron­ment?

IT teams became the front run­ners in the world of busi­ness through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, over­see­ing cloud adop­tion, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, machine learn­ing, remote col­lab­o­ra­tion, and a host of oth­er dig­i­tal ser­vices. Some 51% of IT deci­sion-mak­ers in the UK say that use of cloud solu­tions has increased for data-relat­ed pur­pos­es.

How­ev­er, democ­ra­ti­sa­tion removes the mid­dle­man – the IT team — and sim­pli­fies access to data by employ­ees. We call it Shad­ow IT. This also increas­es the poten­tial for cyber­at­tacks as the secure sys­tems put in place by IT are bypassed by decen­tralised employ­ees.

The “attack sur­face” increas­es as grow­ing num­bers of unse­cured devices have access to the company’s data. This leads to a spike in data breach­es, phish­ing attacks and Dis­trib­uted Denial of Ser­vice attacks. By improv­ing the ease of access, busi­ness­es make the data acces­si­ble to every­one — includ­ing the attack­ers.

IT teams must also com­ply with stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions such as ISO, GDPR and CCPA with­out affect­ing the ease of work.

What tech­nolo­gies and process­es should organ­i­sa­tions put in place to achieve secure data democ­ra­ti­sa­tion, and how does this impact com­pa­ny cul­ture?

In such an envi­ron­ment, imple­ment­ing data pro­tec­tion poli­cies is essen­tial. That means the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty depart­ment must have vis­i­bil­i­ty over the net­work, the infra­struc­ture, the employ­ee devices and event logs – and be able to mon­i­tor the traf­fic in and out of these end­points. This allows the organ­i­sa­tion to pick up on anom­alies and unusu­al behav­iour that indi­cate insid­er attacks and exter­nal cyber­at­tacks. Typ­i­cal process­es include con­trol­ling access to data by both man­aged and unman­aged devices, secur­ing end­points and imple­ment­ing mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, a new Man­ageEngine study shows that while about 44% of deci­sion-mak­ers in the UK believe that secu­ri­ty is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of IT and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty teams, 23% believe that it’s the employ­ees’ respon­si­bil­i­ty too. Train­ing IT teams and the wider work­force to recog­nise sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty starts with cre­at­ing a cul­ture of secu­ri­ty which pri­ori­tis­es employ­ee con­fi­dence, con­sis­ten­cy and per­for­mance.

How can organ­i­sa­tions pre­pare for the future?

Busi­ness­es will be dri­ven by data that is self-oper­at­ing, trans­for­ma­tion­al, and decen­tralised. 56% of deci­sion-mak­ers in the UK already believe that democ­ra­ti­sa­tion opens up more room for inno­va­tion. Com­pa­nies will look for ways to cre­ate fric­tion­less and secure data access. They will also need to devel­op a deep under­stand­ing of their data secu­ri­ty chal­lenges and invest in the right solu­tions.

Ulti­mate­ly, com­pa­nies should look for accred­i­ta­tion from the Cyber Essen­tials scheme, a Gov­ern­ment-backed and indus­try-sup­port­ed pro­gramme to help busi­ness­es pro­tect them­selves from cyber­at­tacks and secu­ri­ty breach­es.

With steps such as these in place, busi­ness­es can face the data-dri­ven future with con­fi­dence.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it manageengine.co.uk 

Pro­mot­ed by Man­ageEngine