IoT: Open It Up by Locking it Down
The evolution and implications of data interaction and storage is moving more swiftly now, as the IoT and Big Data add new complexities and possibilities to the mix.
Though paper and other hard storage will be with us for years to come, it is likely that the economy, ease, positive ecological impact (if energy sources also continue to morph into less dependency on fossil fuels, amongst other influencers) and productivity enhancement of digital engagement and storage will continue to move the world to Cloud and other 'soft' storage methods.
Businesses have the most to gain but a more difficult pivot to a 100% digital environment compared to consumers, due to continued dependency on non-digital formats. Identifying what is really worth saving, categorizing into levels of confidentiality to store via a lower security digital method (less expense) vs. an impervious method (more expensive out of context, however measured against the billions in restitution, lost trust, revenues, customers, and lost brand integrity, the only savvy choice), is best done now with deliberate haste.
In many industries, highly confidential data that requires absolute security is usually about 20-30 percent of all data. Others, like Law Firms, Hospitals, Estate Planners, Dating Sites, and Accountants require 50-80% of their data be protected.
The studies that compare hard to digital storage, both unsecured and secured, that include all the man hours for sorting, preparing to scan, scanning, and managing data when moving from a hard to a digital environment, prove digital to be cost effective in spades.
Already mostly digital? Drag and drop, upload, and secure backup are swift and efficient.
Somewhere down the line, we will all have the option of wearing embedded chips that hold the data we carry on our devices now. On the surface, this seems like a stunning idea from an ease of use and 'coolness' perspective. But as all advancements do, this will bring the other side of the innovation coin to bear. New innovation? New ways to attempt to hack the innovation.
That the world continues to become uber connected via IoT, is both a blessing and a curse. Like the financial markets, when the IoT falters through compromised connections, a domino effect occurs. So it is with the data the IoT proliferates. As we've seen most acutely in the last 5 years or so, most especially in the last 18 months, even companies who have what they believe are the most sophisticated means of data access, storage, and protection, were easy targets for breach.
With IoT, the more connected your business is, the more a genuine security solution becomes an absolute.
No site is immune from being hacked. There is only one way to genuinely protect data, and that's protecting the data itself. As Gartner, Information Age, Wired and many others are writing about, data environments must evolve to be both resilient and unidentifiable on the inside (protected at the byte level) and iron clad vessel (protected on the outside), this last to thwart casual and less experienced hackers.
89% of people in the U.S. want their data protected via a genuinely private and secure technology that is simple to use but packs the kind of protective punch that make data hacks yesterday's problem - solved. An average 65% of the rest of the world feels the same.
People, whether business or consumer based, worry about 3 distinct things when it comes to their data: losing it, access by others (security), not being able to get to it.
The solution is data-centric.
Will 2016 be the year that you begin to protect your company's valuable data at the byte level?
IoT is waiting. Secure your place in it. The sooner the better.
As the CEO of STASH, I am dedicated to delivering peace of mind to everyone in the world who wants a trusted place to store their most important data. STASH delivers data-centric security on demand. If hackers attempt to access your data, all they'll find is a swirling mass of digital confetti. No useable data sets. Nothing to steal.
Businesses interested in knowing more about our custom data-centric security solutions can reach me directly at [email protected], or through LinkedIn.
Consumers: enjoy a FREE 30-day test drive here.
CRO Fictiv | Board Member Sangoma | Mom
6 年Yes! Security creates trust and trust drives even more innovation!
Business samurai | General Manager, Rezoway USA
9 年Janine Darling, yes a lot more data is becoming digital. With each tbytes of data that is creaed, then comes the threat of hacking...so cyber security is indeed an important topic. So let me ask you a question. No system is 100% full proof. I worked on space vehicles...that's the highest rating for any kind of devices you can think of. That being said, you simply cannot build a 100% fail safe space device. So let us say that your system is safe to the 0.1%...the more data you handle, the higher the absolute threat of breach. If you look at the entire us population, it would mean that, statistically, 350,000 people would have their data stollen...how do we deal with that? I am just curious by the way, no argumentative.