Data-secured environment – A priority for enterprises

Last week’s cyber-security breach of the Democratic National Committee’s servers– with its embarrassing leaked documents and alleged Russian connections – put cyber-security back in the headlines. But did it put security at the top of every business’s agenda? The risks of another major breach grow every day, and the stakes have never been higher: according to a 2015 report, the average total cost of a data breach is now more than $3.79 million.

 The security threats facing businesses are two-fold. On the one hand, cyber criminals are constantly evolving new methods of attack. Ransomware is one example of a recently developed threat, and it is costing organisations a fortune: CryptoWall v3, perhaps the most lucrative and broad-reaching ransomware campaign, has cost users worldwide more than $325 million.

 On the other hand, changes in the way businesses operate have opened up new vulnerabilities to be exploited. One of the biggest threats to information security is the increased penetration of cloud-based platforms, with cyber criminals seeing the cloud as a potential weak link. As more and more applications are moving towards the cloud, visibility and control is crucial to ensure a secure environment.

 To add to this, the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) is putting more devices online than ever before, with IDC predicting that 212 billion devices will be connected by 2020. Combine IoT and the cloud, and you potentially multiply the number of connected endpoints, which may have severe security implications. IoT may provide excellent business opportunities, but companies should be mindful about ensuring that access is limited and secure.

 Best practices for a robust security environment

 So how best to confront this? Organisations must take a deep-dive into what specific threats are on the rise, and assess where their networks are most vulnerable. But making a comprehensive survey of your full network is often easier said than done.

Multiple suppliers with multiple access points, across multiple devices and with multiple platforms can mean that there is no clear and easy way of assessing the health and security of a network. A lack of comprehensive network monitoring means that security flaws can be overlooked and breaches missed.

To avoid this, enterprises should look to a global provider that can deliver a unified cloud solution, a solution such as Tata Communications’ own IZO platform. The IZO platform provides both the infrastructure and intelligence at the network-level to cost-efficiently, predictably and securely connect your private datacentre to the public cloud. With the recent addition of IZO Private Cloud and IZO Cloud Storage, the IZO framework provides one single end-to-end hybrid cloud that can scale rapidly and maintain fail-safe stability without the obstacle of managing multiple providers.

Crucially for enterprises seeking data security, the full IZO suite of services gives users end-to-end visibility and control of all their data. Information is streamlined into a ‘single-pane-of-glass’, making monitoring an efficient, not cumbersome, process. Each step in the data journey – access, transit and storage – can be managed and monitored, placing you squarely in the driving seat. And when data can be controlled, it can be secured.

Every enterprise should be thinking hard about how to secure its data, and prepare as best they can, or risk falling victim to tomorrow’s headline data breach.