Data Security Trends Part 3: Security Approaches, A Major Shift in Trends

As IT environments evolve and the plethora of data is unleashed, the methods of security responses shift in light of the changes. Here’s a quick review of how popular trends are reacting to a decade of transformation.

Perimeter Security
The true realization with protecting data is that the perimeter is almost meaningless. That is not to say that perimeter security is no longer needed, but insider threats are real and growing. The perimeter is no longer thought of as a safe place, because close to 50% of recent security breaches have been insider attacks, not someone breaching the perimeter. Thus, insider attack threat vectors are moving security professionals toward a data-centric approach to protecting data.

Device-centric Security
Data in motion is converting device-centric security more towards data-centric security. Device-centric security can safeguard the data while it is on the device, but once the data leaves, the device that was protecting it can no longer do so.

The trend away from device-centric security was accelerated with the growth of virtualization and cloud. As a result, it is much less about the device protection and more about the data, and how to provide data-centric protection without device dependency.

Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that ensures privacy between communicating applications and their users on the Internet. TLS ensures that no third party may eavesdrop or tamper with any message.  However, protecting data-in-transit via 128-bit SSL encryption only provides security during transit not at its origin or destination.

Today's Trend: Data-Centric Security
Based on independent research by the Ponemon Institute, a 2011 multi-national survey concludes that “encryption and key management have become strategic business issues to address compliance and manage risk.” Findings suggest that the importance of encryption is growing globally. There is more deployment of encryption within an overall data protection strategy and for the first time, there are more organizations with an encryption strategy than without.

One of the best ways to ensure that sensitive information is always secure, is to employ data-centric, file-level encryption that is portable across all computing platforms and operating systems and works within a private, public or hybrid cloud computing environment.

Choose a security solution that encrypts the data at the file-level before it leaves a trusted zone. A quality data-centric solution protects data, is portable across all computing platforms and operating systems, and works within any computing environment—giving you control over your data. Used properly, data-centric encryption security prevents unauthorized access and tampering regardless of the state of your data and regardless of where the data travels.

Data-centric protection through encryption renders the data unusable to anyone that does not have the key to decrypt it. No matter whether the data is in motion or at rest, it remains protected. The owner of the decryption keys maintains complete control over the security of that data and determines access to that data. Encryption procedures can easily be integrated into the existing workflow, i.e., a procurement manager could encrypt a private customer contract before sending it to a collaborative work site.

This blog entry is the third in a five part series about data security trends of the past decade. Stay tuned for "Part 4: Constraints Fuel Compromise".