Rising concerns on Data Protection and Data Security

It seems there is no silver bullet to secure the data against breach, which can happen at every level. Data privacy is a growing concern for more consumers.

A report says, 70% of the companies analyzed by KPMG expanded their collection of personal consumer data. Some 75% of the business leaders polled said they are comfortable with the level of data their company collects, and 95% claimed their company has strong or very strong data protection measures in place.

However, there are warning signs even at the businesses that do collect data. Among the business leaders surveyed, 62% felt that their companies should do more to protect customer data. A third of them said that consumers should be more concerned about how their data is used by their company, while 29% admitted that their company has sometimes used unethical means to collect private data.

At the same time experts feel that data anonymization techniques are becoming more sophisticated, and allow businesses to gain real market intelligence without compromising individual privacy, while this is not always realistic, it should be part of every company’s data toolkit.

The increasing concern about data loss and data security is propelling the demand in the data protection as a service (DPaaS) market. Data loss refers to the loss of data due to internal issues like system failure or external issues like cyber-attacks, etc. Enterprises from all around the world have been concerned about data security recently due to incidents of data loss and data leaks.

Customers need data protection vendors to integrate into their data security ecosystem. Organizations looking to “tighten the belt” on their IT budgets will not have the capital to invest in multiple siloed products and will seek out solutions that bridge the gap between security posture, recovery, management, analytics, and integration with third-party tools.

Additionally, cybercriminals are targeting cloud workloads as data centers become more secure. Companies will be forced to extend their cyber resilience beyond the data center. With these additional requirements, the market will need to help customers do more with less—less money, less staff, and less experience. There will be a need for autonomous data resilience, in which the customers’ data is automatically secured and protected.

People have talked about multi-factor authentication (MFA) and zero-trust security for several years now, but as we return to offices in 2023, IT teams must reassess the organizational perimeter with a stronger focus on identity. In recent attacks, we have seen examples of sophisticated social engineering taking advantage of MFA fatigue.

Time and again, it’s been proven that humans are the weakest link in the security chain. With mergers and acquisitions, companies pick up even more tools and data locations. Instead, IT needs to find a way to protect and secure data where it lives, without hiring more people or buying more tools.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA