Different Types of Software for Data Security

In recent years, data breaches have been happening more often. Businesses and organisations are now more aware that even if they have achieved SOX or PCI compliance, new compliance regulations such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will require more stringent data security controls.

Nowadays, many have turned to data protection services to help them improve their compliance and security posture. There are many cybersecurity strategies available that can help you protect your organisation’s sensitive data and to meet the requirements of audits.

Data Discovery and Classification

If you want to protect your data more effectively, you need to know exactly what sensitive data or information you have. A data discovery and classification solution scans your data repositories for all types of data you deem important based on your custom requirements and the industry standards.

The labels can be used to focus on data security resources and implement controls that protect data based on its value to the organisation. If data is modified, the classification should be updated. However, controls need to be in place to prevent users from falsifying the classification level.

Firewall

Firewalls are considered one of the network’s first lines of defense. It works by isolating one network from another. Firewalls also exclude any undesirable traffic from entering your network. Additionally, you can only open certain ports. This gives hackers less room to get in or download your data.

Depending on the firewall policy of the organisation, the firewall can disallow certain or all traffic. It can also perform a verification on some or all of the traffic. A firewall can also be a standalone system or can be included in other infrastructure devices like servers or routers. There are software and hardware firewall solutions.

Antivirus

One of the most widely used and adopted security tools for commercial and personal use is the antivirus software. There are various antivirus software vendors in the market. However, they use the same principle and techniques to detect malicious codes like heuristics and signatures.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

SIEM solutions are designed to provide real-time analysis of security logs that are recorded by servers, software applications, and network devices. Aside from aggregating and correlating the events that come in, they can also perform event deduplication.

Event deduplication is the removal of multiple reports on the same instance and then acting based on the trigger and alert criteria. SIEM solutions also provide analytics toolkits that can help you find those events that are currently needed such as those that are related to data security.

Backup and Recovery

Backup and recovery solutions help organisations protect themselves in case data is destroyed or deleted. All critical business assets should also be periodically duplicated to provide redundancy so in the event of a server failure, malicious damage, or accidental deletion from attacks, data can be restored quickly.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS)

Conventional intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) perform deep packet inspection on network traffic and log any potentially malicious activity. An IDS can also be configured to evaluate system event logs, issue alerts about sessions that violate the security settings.

An IPS also offers detection capabilities and terminates sessions that are considered malicious. IPS and IDS can also help with data protection since they can prevent hackers from getting into the file servers using malware and exploits. However, these solutions require analysis and good tuning before making a decision on an incoming alert.

Besides the above cybersecurity strategies, there are also data protection services you can rely on to ensure that the personal data that your organisation collects, stores and processes is kept safe.