Senetas and IBM have been at GovWare 2017 in Singapore this week. After the first two days, it is clear what the delegates see as their immediate and medium-term priorities for data security.
We have had the opportunity to speak to a wide variety of stakeholders, from both enterprise and government organisations alike. Throughout our conversations, a number of common questions have emerged:
- As the deployment of Cloud and SaaS solutions continues to grow, how can you maintain control over the location and sovereignty of your data?
- How do you manage data security in a world of borderless infrastructure, distributed WAN and the Internet of Things?
- As legislation and regulation continues to evolve, what are the broader implications for both organisations and individuals?
We have spent quite a while discussing the merits of prevention versus protection as a security strategy. Whilst prevention will always be a key part of the IT security checklist, the past few years have taught us that breaches are inevitable. In the event of a breach, organisations need to protect the data itself.
In its 2016 Breach Index Report Gemalto highlighted the fact that just 4% of breaches involved encrypted data. We’re encouraged to see that more and more businesses are waking up to the benefits of encryption and the importance of protecting the breach itself.
CIOs, CTOs and CISOs have become more acutely aware that the buck stops with them when it comes to a breach. Awareness of encryption as the “best, last line of defence” has been raised by the impact it has on mandatory breach notifications and its power as a mitigator of risk when it comes to potential fines or penalties under the emerging data protection regulations worldwide.
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