2024-12-23

data security

5 Ways To Secure Your Data

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It’s never been more important to have comprehensive data security. Hacking is on the rise, as is malware and data loss. Many business entities and individuals are investing
major money into ensuring that their information is safe. Here are the top 5 ways to secure your data:

Use cloud services and/or data

centers—More and more companies are securing their data by utilizing online storage in the cloud, or cloud services, in order to centralize data in real time environments. Data centers like the Digital Realty Trust allow companies to colocate their services, host, and use cloud services in order to cut down on data loss and back up their data.

Steganography—Steganography has been around for a while. It involves hiding data inside of files so that they cannot be easily found. This can be as simple as storing programming code within a folder named “Pictures of Lily,” or it can be a complex process of using security schemes to embed data.

Protect your network—This can be cumbersome process but some would say it is crucial to ensuring that your information cannot be accessed by hackers. The first step is to change your wireless router password. Forget about hiding the Service Set Identifier, disabling DHCP, and filtering MAC addresses—these options will do little to actually protect your network. Your best bet is to throw out the WEP network and adopt WPA or WPA 2, which are encryption standards that use 128-bit encryption keys and a Temporary Key Integrity Protocol. This security should include your Xbox, Wii, laptops, and smartphones.

Encrypt your data—Do your own encrypting and make sure that even if a hacker or thief does get a hold of your hardware they won’t be able to access its data. A great option for this is TrueCrypt, a cross-platform software application for natively securing drives and folders.

Acquire browsing and downloading

privacy—Let’s face it, much of your most important data is entered by you as usernames and passwords while you’re browsing the Internet and downloading files. That’s why securing your Internet privacy and downloads is extremely important . Use an anonymous proxy service such as Vidalia in order to hide your online activity. These are five options for securing data. Combined they should provide you with an extremely valuable safety net against hacking, malware, and viruses. Many of these options, such as cloud computing, will include additional benefits like mor

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Data Loss Risk Will Grow in 2012

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“70% of businesses that suffer a major data loss are out of business within 18 months” – DTI

Data recovery and security need to become priorities but there are still significant risks that are largely being ignored.

Writing for Forbes, Kevin West, chief executive officer of Klogix, suggested that data loss is reaching levels so high and costing companies so much that it could start to impact the economy.

While he cites the US as an example, the importance of intellectual property protection and adequate security training are the same for businesses around the world.

Untrustworthy offshore outsourcers, malicious cyber attacks from organisations and governments, a lack of training and the rise of Bring Your Own Policies at work will all make the risk of data loss grow in 2012.

Data Loss,Data recovery,Data Security

Causes of Data Loss: Hardware Failure,Human Errors,Virus Attack,Software Malfunction, Natural Disaster and Power Crisis…

“There is little formal training offered in the subject of cyber security. As a result we rely on self-taught hackers to fill these jobs, people who choose to use their talents to do good work with corporations, but could just as easily turn to cyber crime,” Mr West added, warning that without investment in training, the issue could get worse.

This view was echoed by Mark Dampster Centre for Cyber Security who warned that the cost of data loss is “vast”.

Is your data asset getting out of sight? Kroll Ontrack has a complete data management solution to ensure your data availability from production to archiving.

Posted by Edward Clark on ontrackdatarecovery.co.uk

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Data Security: Your Information, Their Loot

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Based on the DataLossDB project run through the Open Source Foundation, 100s of countless medical records, banking account amounts, names, and addresses were stolen or accidentally leaked this year.

RSA
The safety division of information storage firm EMC was hit with a hack that jeopardized their popular SecurID cryptographic secrets, forcing these to offer substitutes for their clients. The stolen information was later utilized in a panic attack on defense giant Lockheed Martin.

Texas Comptroller
A server incorrectly left available to the general public contained the Social Security amounts of three.5 million instructors along with other condition employees.

No hacking essential to access this server. The FBI began a criminal analysis.

Sony
The conglomerate lost names, addresses, and charge card and banking account amounts as cyber-terrorist pillaged its video game, music, and movie divisions. Cyber-terrorist made served by 77 million names, e-mail addresses and passwords after breaking Sony’s Ps network.

SK Communications
An intricate attack on the web company netted the private information of 35 million South Korean customers. That’s inside a country of 50 million people.

SAIC (SAI)
A couple of from the defense contractor’s backup tapes were stolen from an employee’s vehicle. The tapes contained the medical records in excess of 5 million military patients.

Sutter Medical Foundation
A stolen laptop in the health-care provider contained 3.3 million names along with other determining information, together with 943,000 patient diagnoses. This incident triggered a category action suit, alleging negligence in acquiring data.

Nexon
A hacker acquired what they are called, user names, and passwords of 13.two million gamers from the popular video game MapleStory.

262,812,546: Confirmed quantity of records uncovered or stolen this year, from a lot more than 800 separate occurrences.

37.4%: Increase in the amount of reported hacking occurrences over this past year.

Hacking-adeliberately entering computers-abecame the most typical breach this past year:

Hacking 81.%
Unknown/Other 9.8%
Stolen hardware 4.4%
Virus/phishing 2.7%
Lost hardware 2.1%

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Backup VS Data Safety

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data backup

Entry-level RAID controllers allow administrators to create secure multi-drive storage arrays to host a server’s operation system and vital data.

Many people don’t appreciate the value of backups and data safety until they experience what it means to lose data. Whether it is music, videos or photos at home or project files, customer data or other digital assets in the office, people don’t think of data safety – until it’s too late.

Imagine how you would feel if your vacation photos or videos of your wedding and daughter’s birth were destroyed? Such scenarios can lead to divorce court when your better half finds out. Or how would your boss react if his or her email and project files were lost due to a faulty hard drive? Your life might be spared, but you could still get fired.

No warranty in the world protects you from such an incident. Make no mistake about it: these things happen every day! If it’s your data, it’s your responsibility to protect it. And even if you’ve got a boss who eventually is responsible, he or she might still blame the loss of data on you. In the end, you can do no wrong by developing awareness of threats and paying attention to data safety.

Backup Vs. Data Safety

At this point we have to differentiate between a backup and basic data safety. Both mean something different and every business should rely on both regular backups and a safe data repository.

Performing a backup means copying files or complete system images from your hard drive onto another storage device, where the data is safe from hardware malfunction, viruses or accidental modification. If anything happens to your primary data, you can access the backup “snapshot” and restore whatever you need.

Any type of drive can be used for backups, but you should pay attention to data safety offered by the solution you pick. A hard drive, for example, cannot be considered a safe medium, as it uses mechanical components that may fail. A perfect backup is performed frequently, is written onto alternating media that are partially stored off-site and should be written onto media that is widely available.

When we talk about data safety, we specifically address the issue that every computer stores all key data on hard drives, and that every hard drive will eventually fail. The challenge is to create a storage subsystem that is unsusceptible to hard drive failures. This is where the five RAID storage controllers come into play.

AMCC, Areca, HighPoint, LSI Logic and Promise Technology offer PCI Express add-on cards that run up to four hard drives to create fast and secure storage array.

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Data Recovery and Encryption

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Business continuity and disaster planning are critical for businesses regardless of their size. Most archive and backup software have key features to restore user files, database stores and point in time snap-shots of users’ files. Software is becoming more automated so users don’t have to manually backup their files. Some computer manufacturers have built-in backup systems that include dedicated hard disk drives for archive storage. Most external USB hard disk drives have some sort of third party software that provides data archiving during a trial time period. Such solutions, while solving the data backup need, create questions regarding how effective the systems are with respect to user data. What are your options when a user’s computer has a data disaster and the hard disk drive is fully encrypted?

Most IT security policies require a multi-pronged approach to data security. For example, when setting up a new computer for a user, the IT department will require a BIOS (Basic Input/output System) password for the system before the computer will start. BIOS password security varies in functionality. Some are computer system specific, meaning that the computer will not start without the proper password. Other BIOS passwords are hard disk drive specific, meaning that the hard drive will not be accessible without the proper password. Some computer BIOS employ one password for access control to the system and the hard disk drive. To add a second level of protection, new IT security policies require full hard disk drive encryption. The most common of full hard disk encryption software operates as a memory resident program. When the computer starts up, the encryption software is loaded before the operating system starts and a pass-phrase or password prompt is required. After a successful login from the user, the software decrypts the hard disk drive sectors in memory, as they are needed. The process is reversed when writing to the hard disk drive. This leaves the hard disk drive in a constant state of encryption. The operating system and program applications function normally, without having to be aware of any encryption software.

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Data Security & Data Loss

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Encryption continues to be the topic on every CIO and IT person’s lips nowadays. No one wants to end up in the news as the next victim of a privacy breach or the next company that didn’t protect its customers’ information. If you conduct a news search using the words “personal data breach,” you’ll be alarmed at the number of instances where personal information such as social security and credit-card numbers have been exposed to possible theft. In a recent breach, a state government site allowed access to hundreds of thousands of records, including names, addresses, social security numbers and documents with signatures.

Whether it’s government agencies, research facilities, banking institutions, credit card processing companies, hospitals–or your company’s computers – the risk of compromising private information is very high.  At the recent “CEO-CIO Symposium,” speaker Erik Phelps from the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich described the relationship business has with technology. In his presentation, he stated that since “business relies so heavily on technology today, business risk becomes technology dependent.” The possibility of litigation is part of business. It has always been a risk of doing business, but because technology and today’s business are so intertwined, business risk has a higher threat level. This has prompted many to encrypt workstations and mobile computers in order to protect critical business data.

If you have rolled out encryption, how do you maintain your IT service quality when the hard disk drive fails? How do you plan and prepare for a data loss when the user’s computer is encrypted?  These are all issues that should be considered when putting together a data disaster plan. In addition, data recovery, one of the more common missing elements of a disaster recovery plan, should also be factored in because it can serve as the “Hail Mary” attempt when all other options have been exhausted

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