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Today is the last day of Data Privacy Week 2022, which is marked as Data Privacy Day in Europe. Both events are formal observances of the ratification of Convention 108. The convention has been modernized several times since it was first opened in for signing in 1981 and its protocols shape healthcare data privacy use, storage and destruction, for example, and define boundaries between how consumers/internet users are responsible for protecting their personal privacy and how business and government entities must take responsibility for the ethical collection of data and customer privacy protection.
Here’s what the B2B spaces are saying and doing about those responsibilities in the era of COVID-19 and the changes we have experienced at home, at work and as even more internet-dependent citizens of the world.
“The premise of ‘work anywhere, anytime’ has increased the overall threat landscape in the past two years as a huge proportion of the global workforce worked remotely, often outside of their corporate networks,” said Darren Yablonski, a Senior Director of Sales Engineering for teams in Canada, U.S. and LATAM at Commvault “This dramatically increases the number of potential entry points for bad actors to access files and, with many employees storing files locally and working offline, there is a greater risk of shadow IT and files not being backed up. It is crucial that Canadian organizations implement an effective data protection solution to deny unauthorized access and ensure fast recovery of lost data should the worst happen.”
No one should feel that their data privacy is completely exposed every time they venture onto a new website or use a new app, but there are questions about how up-to-date protections are.
“Most Canadian organizations have data protection strategies,” Yablonski said, “but they are often legacy solutions that need to be modernized. Many try to patch their legacy solutions to make them fit today’s threat landscape, but this has a limited effect and leaves data vulnerable. In order to be sure current strategies are fit for the modern-day, budget should be allocated to invest in new data protection solutions. While we are currently not seeing companies adopting these new technologies en masse, this will likely gradually change. A lot of people are behind the curve because the market itself is still modernizing. We are moving in the right direction, but there is still a lot to be done.”
From Yablonski’s point of view, the most important aspect of data protection is ensuring lost data can be quickly recovered if there is a security event. He advises that businesses adopt the following best practices:
- Stay current: Make sure your data protection platform is up to date and adopt new capabilities that vendors are bringing to market to avoid data falling through any gaps of your legacy solutions.
- Adopt a zero-trust approach to security, only allowing employees access to areas they need to do their job, having air-gapped solutions for most critical assets, and using multi-factor authentication, are just a few examples of what businesses can do to protect their data.
- Test, test, and test again: Be confident in solutions by trying and testing their ability to recover data and fend off any attempted attacks.
HP marked Data Privacy Week with the third edition of its HP Wolf Security report series Out of Sight & Out of Mind.
The report revealed that 73% of Canadian IT departments have seen a rise in the number of employees opening malicious links or attachments in an email over the last year. Employees are buying and using unsanctioned devices in tandem with the increase in cyber-attacks, making IT support more complex, time-consuming, and costlier than ever.
Key findings from the report include:
· 35% of Canadians have been clicking more on malicious links since working from home.
· Only 32% of remote workers considered security when purchasing new IT equipment, compared to 52% who considered cost
· 53% of users agree that they feel stranded working from home from an IT perspective, and if something were to go wrong, they’d be on their own
· 42% of Canadian employees agree with the statement“Cybersecurity never enters my mind when I’m working: that’s IT’s job”
· 66% of Canadian IT departments agree thatprotecting against, detecting and recovering from firmware attacks has become more difficult
· 20% of Canadian IT decision-makers estimate the cost of support has increased by 51-60%
The AppDynamics App Attention Index 2021, showed that, for consumers, security is the number one component of a high performing ‘total application experience’.
The index states that 73% of Canadians say that their expectation of brands to keep their data secure has increased since 2020.
“In this post-pandemic era, a strong security posture means organizations have the necessary processes in place to protect their applications and their business from vulnerabilities and threats,” said Gregg Ostrowski, Executive CTO at Cisco AppDynamics. “In a world where sensitive data is constantly at risk of being compromised by malicious actors, they must be prepared and strengthen their security posture, enabling them to predict, prevent and respond to threats.”
The DevSecOps methodology, a modern approach to software development, does take data privacy protection a step further by incorporating security enhancements at the beginning of the application development lifecycle for a more proactive approach to reduce risks of threats to sensitive customer data.
“In order for a DevSecOps approach to be fully effective, teams need to implement a full-stack observability solution,” Ostrowski said. “This approach will give them in-depth visibility into the entire IT stack, including traditional legacy systems through to new, native cloud environments as well as hybrid deployments. It is a vital step in the right direction.”
