Data Security & Compliance Blog

Data loss prevention (DLP) is a broad term that refers to a collection of techniques designed to prevent sensitive data either falling into the wrong hands or being corrupted in some way. Such techniques include controlling and monitoring access to sensitive data, and any devices/networks that store the data. While firewalls, IDPS and anti-virus solutions are useful for analysing and restricting inbound network traffic, DLP is more focused on what … Read more

These days enterprises are dealing with vast amounts of unstructured data – a problem that is compounded by the increasing number of ways to share this data. Despite this, both employers and employees are still failing to either understand or care about their responsibilities when it comes to data protection. According to research carried out by Opinion Matters – an independent research organization, 60% of IT leaders believe that “employee … Read more

Data classification is often seen as the starting point in many data security strategies, especially if your organization is growing and collecting large volumes of data. The reason for this, is that you cannot accurately focus your cybersecurity strategy if you do not know where your most sensitive data resides. How can you ensure appropriate access controls and monitor user behavior effectively if you don’t know what the data actually … Read more

Phishing scams are one of the most common methods of attack you’re likely to come across. They are a hugely profitable attack method for cybercriminals, as thousands fall victim to them every year. Fortunately, due to their commonplace nature, phishing scams are avoidable if you know how to correctly identify and prevent them. Here are 10 simple steps to identifying and preventing phishing scams in 2019. 1. Know what a … Read more

If you’re a small business or even an enterprise organization using Office 365, cyber-criminals, hackers and opportunist insiders could be targeting potential weaknesses in your security right now. To combat these threats, we’ve put together this list of six best practices to help you improve the security of your Office 365 environment. The best practices in this blog will primarily focus on SharePoint, OneDrive, Groups and Microsoft Teams workloads, so … Read more

Deception technologies, often referred to as Decoys, Honeypots, and Red Herrings, are assets that have been specifically setup to attract, deceive and discourage cyber-criminals. Such assets may include anything from servers, files, databases, applications, emails, user accounts, unused IP addresses, and so on. When these assets are accessed in some way, a real-time alert is sent to the administrators, or alternatively, an automated response could be initiated. Deception technologies can … Read more

Almost 15 billion data records have been lost or stolen since 2013 – an issue that affects North America disproportionately more than other parts of the world. Should a company fall victim to an effective data breach, it could result in a loss of reputation, and could incur heavy financial losses. According to the 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report by the Ponemon Institute, the global average cost of … Read more

The UK government recently launched a second audit of the cybersecurity labor market in order to find out whether organizations are failing when it comes to hiring and training cybersecurity professionals. Companies in both the public and the private sector were chosen at random to participate in the audit, with the aim being for the audit to affect future government policies to overcome the skills shortage. The audit is the … Read more

According to recent studies, since 2013 there have been over twice as many records that have been stolen or lost than there are humans on the earth. Statistics like this should be shocking, but many find it difficult to quantify what this means in real business terms. With this in mind, it’s important to take a step back and look at the tangible effects that breaches in cybersecurity could potentially … Read more

The rate of cloud technology adoption has increased dramatically over the last few years, with file storage generally being the go-to cloud service. That’s because cloud storage enables organizations to keep costs down and made data more accessible, helping to drive collaborations. Microsoft are responsible for very popular cloud file storage services. Microsoft OneDrive is a non-business product that comes as standard with their email services. OneDrive for Business, on … Read more