The value of data will continue to rise in the future years, necessitating further investment in data protection by businesses.

As a result of most firms’ digital-first strategy, “data” has become the new king. This is the most important mantra in the tech business. In fact, data has turned out to be the single most valuable commodity across businesses, and its expansion has exposed enterprises to new issues, including how to secure data from cybercriminals.

Information that can be used to identify current or potential consumers is referred to as Personal Identifiable Information. This data describes procedures, source code for competing products, firm acquisition data, or any other intellectual knowledge.

Data continues to be a critical pillar in the success and growth of organizations and innovations. It is changing how people work, live, and play. All forms of personal data are easier than ever to obtain and correlate with various business applications thanks to social applications, cloud, and IoT devices, mixing personal and professional lives.

Data has gained more legitimacy as a result of digital transformation, which has pushed a surge in cloud usage. Businesses are generating a rising amount of data, necessitating the need to store it in larger repositories. This alone generates a new sector that feeds on new technologies like big data analytics combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence to draw insights.

Industry-wide worldwide cloud adoption is being driven by data. Though data isn’t the most important factor in cloud adoption, it is by far the most important. Sharing, producing, and exploiting this data is the cornerstone for effective SaaS adoption, messaging, IaaS, creation, and adoption for both consumers and enterprises.

The most enticing factor fuelling cyber-criminal activity across companies is data. It is the industry’s most serious flaw, posing a threat to customers and organizations through cyber threats and data breaches. The value of data, as well as the number of exploits, is increasing every year for cybercriminals such as activist hackers, organized criminals, and general bad actors.

To win the war against cybercriminals, a move to information-centric or data-centric security is required. Threat security is evolving with the current generation of threat technology, ranging from Isolation technology to Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) for simply isolating users from a potential threat. 

The latest security architecture and frameworks aimed at tackling cloud security, such as Forrester Zero Trust Framework and Gartner Secure Access service Edge, are based on layered approaches for on-premises security. Because most firms already have a data blind spot, they invest in data protection only sparingly.

Many cloud providers, including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, are increasing their security spending while maintaining a “shared responsibility” paradigm. Instead then resolving an organization’s end-to-end security architecture, these expenditures are meant to provide options. Some companies that do have a complete model, such as Microsoft Office 365, offer a sophisticated AIP data protection solution. They are, however, exorbitantly priced and have little utility.

The duty for data collection, handling, and storage is gradually shifting to the entities that gather, process and store the data. The lack of attention most firms have on their current data-security posture, with little or no visibility of their sensitive data to analyze how safe they are, is the most shocking reason. This isn’t just a case of indifference; it’s also a matter of resources and investment.

Unlike threat protection, data protection emphasizes the importance of a programmatic approach that begins with education, followed by the implementation of a data-handling process, the re-evaluation of the necessity to gather data, and the use of technology to identify and secure the data.

Enterprises’ need to secure data will push a data-centric security approach as government regulations safeguarding personal data become more stringent. The expense of deploying a data-centric security approach will significantly outweigh the cost of a security breach in terms of negative brand reputation, financial impact, and consumer confidence.

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