To protect data, prevention is far better than a cure. However, in a world where data use is critical to an organization’s functions, the need to protect existing data is more important than ever. With the recent rise and prevalence of cyber threats, IT professionals are responsible for devising a good strategy, which depends on the best practices that can ensure data security at rest.

For this reason, it has become mandatory for organizations to protect their sensitive information regardless of their location across the far reaches of the globe. A series of data protection legislation has been led by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has made companies responsible for protecting sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII), in front of the law.

Data at Rest: What Is It?

Data in use is data that various users within a network often update. Such data can be very active. On the other hand, data at rest is static data that can be stored on hard drives and is not often modified or accessed such as Credit Card Numbers (CCNs), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and Social Security Numbers (SSNs). Data in transit is the one that is subject to third-party services without the guarantee of its security.

Among these, data at rest is often more vulnerable to cybercriminals. Malicious insiders who want to damage a company or steal its data before moving on can also target this kind of data. After all, it is within the company network, and they’re looking for a big payoff.

The Importance of Securing Data at Rest, in Use, and Motion

A primary reason why organizations often pay close attention to the manner of their data storage is information theft. After all, criminals can use stolen data for identity fraud, government espionage, and other malicious intentions. Besides this, small and mid-sized organizations are often seen as attractive targets for stealing information since most of them lack the right sophisticated data security tools.

Besides this, it is also possible for smaller organizations to become reluctant once they figure out the cost of security tools or policy enforcement. However, there is an obvious risk of significant data loss due to information theft, which should serve as a justification for the resources invested in protecting data.

Even though small and midsize organizations can represent attractive targets, it doesn’t imply that larger companies are immune to cyberattacks. Indeed, they also need to ensure that the right budgets are set aside for appropriate information security.

In addition, it should be noted that even though huge amounts of time used to be invested by organizations in trying to detect and mitigate any form of external threats. However, with the availability of modern tools, companies can develop the right strategies that can help them monitor their data at rest.

Protect Data at Rest by Adopting Log Data Loss Prevention Tools

Organizations might decide to go a step further to secure their data at rest. They can do so by adopting Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions, which are capable of limiting or blocking the connection of USBs, removable storage drives, or mobile devices. While using Data Loss Prevention solutions, companies can achieve regulatory compliance with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, and others, avoiding fines and other damages imposed by regulatory entities.

With this in mind, it becomes impossible to connect malicious USBs to a device to infect it. Also, they cannot be used to boot a computer. This also ensures that data exfiltration is prevented through storage devices. For example, the CoSoSys Endpoint Protector offers a solution called “eDiscovery”. It is a Data Loss Prevention tool for data at rest that addresses both internal and external threats, helps create sensitive content policies, and takes remediating actions. It is an example of a solution that can offer certain encryption features that ensure that employees can use USB devices approved by the company while ensuring that the files copied on them are encrypted.

By using content inspection and contextual scanning, these DLP tools can search for sensitive data on predefined content or file names in numerous file types, which are stored locally on employees’ computers. Encryption of sensitive data will ensure that it cannot be misused or stolen. Remediation actions can be taken depending on the results.

DLP solutions often provide a way for users can adapt to control sensitive information on employees’ computers remotely. Whenever access to this information is no longer desirable or reliable, they can remove it, as they act as an extra security layer for managing data. Furthermore, using DLP solutions ensures that businesses can be kept compliant with various security standards by reporting incident responses and alerting the admin if there is an area of weakness.

It must also be stressed that companies should not focus on protecting only data at rest – or only one type of data. Otherwise, the consequences can be disastrous. For this reason, companies must seek solutions that can tackle and manage sensitive data, regardless of the state it finds itself in.

How to Secure Sensitive Data at Rest

In detail, this guide has already discussed the importance of securing data at rest. For this reason, this section will explain some common ways that sensitive data at rest can be protected. Keep on reading to learn more.

Identify and Locate Data

All businesses must understand that data is sensitive – so is its use. Some of this data includes business information, personal information, and classified information. Companies must keep processes in place to ensure that the location where sensitive data is stored is significantly limited. However, this is only possible when they can appropriately identify and locate the kind of data they are dealing with.

Classify Data

Different organizations adopt different methods of classifying their data. Yet, leaders of various business departments must assist in evaluating and classifying data and applications based on their importance. This should be done from a business continuation perspective. Take, for instance, an application that facilitates production and revenue, which can be crucial to the organization’s progress. Such data can be classified to be critical.

Yet, it is worth noting that classification is often a dynamic process, which demands that companies continuously re-evaluate their data protection levels while adjusting them as required. For instance, if data that was never considered critical suddenly holds great significance, then the embraced encryption should change. Also, this includes the policy that can manage this encryption.

In addition, by sorting and labeling software, data can be given a unique digital signature, which is a function of its classification. This will ensure that users can focus data security resources around these hubs. By combining this with various protective software, sensitive data classification software can help teams gain crucial insight into the protection, movement, and location of sensitive data files. 

Consider Encryption

According to some IT administrators; there may be concerns about potential performance degradation related to encryption. However, this shouldn’t stop enterprises from enjoying the security advantages of encryption. Besides this, there are a plethora of ways that can be embraced to get around performance issues. These include the selective encryption of database fields, rows, and columns, as well as encrypting all data regardless of sensitivity.

Secure the Infrastructure

It is worth noting that the infrastructure that supports data at rest determines how secure it will be. A good way of ensuring the security of the infrastructure is by continuously keeping track of external and internal threats to data access.

With this in mind, the right network hardware, Operating Systems, and patching of servers can be critical to ensuring data security.

The adoption of various antivirus and anti-malware software is considered by many for both commercial and personal use. Since these viruses and malware, the software can target malicious codes while removing all kinds of trojans, rootkits, and viruses before they can damage, steal, or modify sensitive data. This will help stop malware and viruses from finding their way into networks.

Users Should be Trained

To promote the prevention of data loss. There must be a proper understanding of the importance of security at rest for employees with access to information that is critical to the business. It is no stretch to suggest that many data breaches over the years have resulted from human negligence.

For this reason, adequate training is needed to prevent the risk of human error.

Conclusion

The good use of data is an essential part of maintaining the progress of any sized business. Data ensures that organizations can identify issues while making informed decisions. Data can also help businesses establish their goals, keeping them moving forward.

For this reason, it has become essential to keep sensitive data. By protecting your data appropriately, you can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access to the data. Besides this, the kind of security measures that will be adopted will be based on the data being protected. This makes it imperative to understand and implement the various tools to facilitate the security of all kinds of data.