Why Every Company Needs A Proactive Plan to Secure their Proprietary and Sensitive Data

- Ted West, BOHH Labs Chairman

Companies store a massive amount of data which they want to liberate for new business applications, analytics and optimization. These data include everything about customers, suppliers, production and logistics operations, as well as financial transactions and results. All these data offer new value to companies looking at adding new business applications and analytics tools to help make better business decisions and remain competitive.

Many of these applications and tools reside on the cloud, outside of existing “firewalls” of security. And while the companies consider and procure more and more security solutions to harden the edges of the firewall, they remain reluctant to “let the data out” to the cloud due the risk of it being hacked, leaked, lost, or stolen. As a result, companies may be missing out on ways to better optimize their business.

In today’s business environment, proprietary data can be an immensely valuable asset. It must be treated as such. It is no longer enough for companies to take a laissez-faire approach to securing proprietary data, reacting to a threat or breach and figuring out how to deal with it on the fly. Rather, companies must adopt a proactive approach and plan to secure their data before letting the data out.

Companies are responsible for holding massive amounts of data – much of which is sensitive customer and employee personal information such as PHI (Protected Health Information) or PII (Personal Identifiable Information), as well as sensitive proprietary and financial data. When a company experiences a breach and any of this sensitive data is leaked, companies are exposed to financial and brand damage, trust and loyalty degradation, and even lawsuits, financial penalties and fines.

That is why it is critical companies have plan to approach their data security. But, what does such a proactive data security plan look like? The first step is understanding your data and how it is already protected. Once these questions are addressed, data security protocols and policies will be better understood, and new security protocols and solutions can be reinforced, updated or added.

Questions you must address to start your data security plan when moving data outside the enterprise:

1. What company data from the inside is needed to move on the outside into new applications?
2. How is this data transported from on premise (inside the firewall) to the cloud?
3. Which of these data are truly sensitive, subject to privacy and confidentiality requirements?
4. How will user access to these data be provided once data is outside the firewall?
5. How will the truly sensitive data be transported and accessed with privacy and confidentiality?

When companies don’t have a plan in place to protect their proprietary data, it can’t be properly leveraged to optimize their business. The analytical value of data is enormous and can be applied to everywhere from improving sales cycles to helping organizations plan better marketing efforts that will help companies make more informed decisions on how to interact with its current and potential customers. However, if data is not properly protected or, even worse, if data is breached and stolen from bad actors, companies will lose the ability to apply this value to their business efforts.

Every company should have a well-thought out plan to protect their proprietary data at the root level to help minimize risk of data breach and loss, while taking advantage of the full use of their data.