Data is Big Business!

Why is that?

Interestingly enough, data is considered to be an asset due to its use for risk mitigation, revenue optimization, and business improvement; thus making data an integral asset (Inspired Techs, 2016).  Data is big business and like any asset, it must be protected from unauthorized users or misuse.  All things considered, if someone changes the information in an organization's customer database and adds fictitious data/information, this incident has the potential to destroy an organization's reputation along with causing a loss of productivity and revenue due to the downtime being spent to resolve the issues (BALTZAN, 2017). 

Equally, there are many other business risks associated with data security such as employee mobility, email, unpatched servers or other devices, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), third-party services, and the cloud to name a few (Schiff, 2015).  These are all potential business risks when it comes to data security, but a combination that comes to mind as the most disastrous is employee mobility and negligence in conjunction with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).  As an illustration, when I'm mobile, I use my work cell phone to perform some significantly important tasks that involve confidential data.  However, if I just logged on to any free wi-fi and began to work, I have now become a business risk as a great deal of free wi-fi connections are not secure. 

All in all, data security is a big deal and is at an all-time high.  As environments become more complex and fast-paced the need to secure data is essential, but can often be overlooked.  Therefore, in my experience, to minimize security breaches it is crucial to perform a risk assessment to identify pertinent and valuable data along with having systems and procedures in place to keep it secure.         

#FearlessIT