Data-centric security has become increasingly common in recent years. It’s an approach to cybersecurity that focuses on data. Cyber attacks often target data. If your business becomes the victim of a cyber attack, some of its data may be exposed. And data breaches such as this can cause severe and long-lasting damage.
What Is Data-Centric Security?
To determine whether it’s right for your business, you must understand the meaning of data-centric security. Data-centric security is designed to protect against cyber attacks. It’s distinguished from other cybersecurity approaches, though, by its focus on data.
Other approaches to cybersecurity seek to strengthen the security of networks, computer devices, applications, etc. In comparison, data-centric security seeks to strengthen the security of data.
Common safeguards for data-centric security include:
- User access control
- Data masking
- encryption
The Concepts of Data-Centric Security
There are different ways to execute a data-centric security strategy, but most of them include a few core concepts. The data-centric security model, for instance, requires knowledge of what data is being stored and the location where it’s stored. It also includes the ability to define access privileges for specific users or locations.
Protection is another concept of data-centric security. When executing a data-centric security strategy, you might be able to protect against data loss as well as the unauthorized use of data. Finally, monitoring is a concept of data-centric security. Monitoring involves actively monitoring data usage while looking for signs of cyber attacks or other suspicious activities.
Is Data-Centric Security Right for Your Business?
With data-centric security, you can focus on protecting and securing your business’s data. Data, of course, is the target of most business-related cyber attacks. Some hackers may seek to disrupt businesses’ operations, but many of them seek to steal businesses’ data so that they can sell it on the black market. You can protect your business’s data by embracing data-centric security.
Data-centric security works for all types of data, including on-premise and cloud data. On-premise data is stored locally, whereas cloud data is stored on a remote server. Whether your business uses on-premise data, cloud data or a combination thereof, it can benefit from data-centric security.
Of course, data-centric security can be combined with other cybersecurity strategies. You don’t have to rely on data-centric security to protect your business from cyber attacks. Even if you use a data-centric approach, you can still deploy other safeguards, such has a firewall and endpoint cybersecurity software.