Data Security & Compliance Blog

It’s that time of year again where we give you a little peak into what our security specialists believe will be the dominant data security trends in 2019. This year, we’ve highlighted 8 trends that have built up significant steam in 2018 and are ready to explode heading into the new year. So, let’s get started. 1. Wider Adoption of Data-Centric Audit & Protection There has been a lot of … Read more

Data discovery and classification is fast becoming the must have data security feature – and for good reason. Considering that businesses are creates vast amounts of unstructured data every day, it’s increasingly important to ensure that you can tell what that data is and what levels of protection need to be applied to it. As a result of the demand for this kind of functionality, naturally vendors have been popping … Read more

It’s quite frustrating (especially if you work for a vendor specializing in detecting and preventing insider threats) when organizations falsely assume that insider threats don’t apply to them. Despite being responsible for around 30% of all cybercrime, insider threats don’t seem to get the same attention when it comes to security budgets as preventing external attacks, for example. It seems that both SMEs and Enterprise organizations believe themselves to be … Read more

Trying to understand what network security solutions are available, the differences between them, how and when they should be used, can be overwhelming for most organizations. While there are many options to choose from, a typical suite of tools would include an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software/hardware, and a sophisticated Data-Centric Audit & Protection (DCAP) solution, which deals with User Behaviour Analytics (UBA). Additionally, many organizations … Read more

Over the last few years we have been unfortunate enough to be witness to numerous data breaches of unimaginable size and scale. So why have these organizations been able to recover so quickly and why aren’t consumers angrier about how their data is being handled? Target, Facebook, Equifax, British Airways and Cambridge Analytica (to name a few) are all examples of companies failing to adequately protect consumer information – but … Read more

According to a recent report by McAfee, the average employee actively uses 36 cloud services at work, and a lot of the data that get stored using these services is sensitive (18.1%). Such data includes financial records, business plans, Social Security numbers, credit and debit card numbers, protected health information, and so on. The above figures highlight the importance of a tight cloud-security strategy. Below are some tips to help … Read more

By now, I’m sure most of you will have heard about The Starwood Hotels and Resorts data breach that resulted in the exposure of an astonishing 500 million hotel guests’ data. Everyone is waiting with bated breath to see whether this breach will lead to the world’s first significant GDPR fines. What Happened? In a statement filed with US regulators on the 30th November 2018, the hotels and resort giant … Read more

According to the 2018 Horizon Scan Report, cyber-attacks present the greatest threat to organizations, and the average total cost of data breach has climbed to $3.86M, according to the 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study. Of the financial costs mentioned in the above report, “lost business” was the leading contributor – accounting for as much as $1.45 million. Loss of business was mostly down to reputational damage. However, it … Read more

Employees violate security policies on a regular basis, hence why the majority of data breaches are caused by insiders, in some way or another. Sure, sometimes security incidents are caused by disgruntled or opportunistic employees; however, most of the time the motives are less suspicious. So, what are the main reasons employees violate security policies? 1. A Lack of Security Awareness Training According to a report by Clutch.co, more than … Read more

Naturally, healthcare service providers were keen to switch from paper-based health records to electronic health records (EHRs), as doing so makes it a lot faster and easier to access patient data and improve patient care. However, healthcare service providers, including any third-parties they are affiliated with, need to find a way to balance the risks and rewards. According to a recent article by Spohn Solutions, ePHI (Protected Health Information) is … Read more