In early 2018, the Facebook Cambridge Analytica data breach shocked the world. Millions of Facebook users found out that Cambridge Analytica had harvested their data without consent to use it in an upcoming election.
In that same year, 6,460 U.S. military and security personnel found out that a fitness app called ‘Polar’ had such lax data security, that anyone had access to their personal details. Researchers could track the military and security personnel users as they exercised, see their names, heart rates, and even where they lived.
This is just a fraction of the data breaches that happened in 2018 alone. Luckily, some countries have set up new laws to protect their citizens’ data. Amongst these laws, is the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation will strengthen data protection for citizens, giving them the power to control their personal data. Violation of this regulation will have severe penalty fees of up to 4% of violators’ revenue worldwide.
To protect your company’s data, and prepare for this -and other- regulations, here are some of the best data security protection out there.
Embedded Hardware Authentication
Username and password are known for their inadequacies as security measures. With hacking methods like brute force attack and phishing, hackers can easily crack user’s passwords. But, with the introduction of embedded hardware authentication, companies can now offer additional protection to their data directly on their hardware.
Intel introduced Sixth-generation vPro Chips that propelled the breakthrough in this technology. The vPro chip can allow companies:
- Embed it into their hardware as added protection against cyber attacks.
- Combine different kinds of hardware-enhanced factors at once in a bid to validate a user’s identity.
- Add hardware devices as part of their authentication process. Since a good authentication is essentially what users know (password), what they are (username) and what they have (a token), the hardware with the embedded Intel chip will then become what users have.
This security application will see immediate use in the authentication of an endpoint in a traditional IT environment, i.e., personal computers, and mobile devices with an Intel chipset.
Behavioural Analytics
Next, we have the fast-growing behavioral analytics field to strengthen cybersecurity technology. During the Facebook Cambridge Analytica data breach, the company made use of behaviour analysis in the data mining process. This isn’t new as several data miners use behavioural analysis to target various social media platforms.
But, a lot of research is being done in behavioral analytics to help develop more potent cybersecurity technologies. Using behaviour analytics to strengthen data security technology will help systems detect potential and real-time cyber threats.
For example, if this technology finds an abnormal rise in data transmitted from a specific user’s device, this could be a sign of a cyber threat.
Behavioural analytics technology will see great use in networks and user devices.
Cloud Data Protection
Another data security technology on our list is cloud data protection. Keep your data safe by encrypting them and storing them on a cloud. This will:
- Ensure a more reliable backup of your company information.
- Make accessing company information safer and easier for authorized parties.
Make sure to do your research on trusted cyber security companies before you settle on one. Read their contracts to ensure there is no backdoor access to your files. If you have to, write the contract yourself. You can also hire writers from professional content writing services such as Online Writers Rating or Best Writers Online to help create your contracts. Also, make sure their server parks are in locations with strict data protection laws.
Data loss prevention
Also, we have data loss prevention technology. These are major technologies like encryption and tokenization. Cybersecurity companies can offer data loss prevention technologies to their clients to help:
- Prevent cyber attackers from monetizing any data they may acquire from a breach. Seeing as data is encrypted or has to be accessed using a token if there is a successful hack, the data obtained will be useless.
- Move and use data across the company. Since data is encrypted, employees will carry out business tasks on the encrypted data. Thus reducing the data exposure and risk of moving data.
- Companies comply with the data privacy and security regulations in their respective locations. As payment card information (PCI) and personally identifiable information (PII) are all encrypted.
We advise all companies to have a form of data loss prevention technology as part of their data protection system. They make it hard for hackers to read your company data should they gain access to it.
Deep learning
Another popular data security measure from several big companies is deep learning. Like behaviour analytics, it focuses on irregular behaviour. But unlike behaviour analytics, it focuses on entities rather than user behaviour. So, instead of searching for unusual user behaviour, deep learning technology searches for strange behaviour in places.
For example, your company could use deep learning technology on a data centre (as an entity).
Because of new development in this tech, cybersecurity companies can focus their protection efforts on various entities that exist across companies on micro to macro levels.
This technology will see increased use in cybersecurity companies looking to decrease the time it takes to detect and eradicate cyber threats.
Wrapping up
These five data security technologies will help cybersecurity companies strengthen their security offerings. While some are still in their infant stages, there is still a lot on our list already seeing practical world use. Find out how you can incorporate any of these into your existing security measures to beef it up.
