🔐Security Measures for Protecting Data

Because a vast amount of data does include private and sensitive information about individuals, we must always review essential security measures for protecting data from unauthorized access and cyber threats. With the increasing amount of data being generated and stored by organizations, it is crucial to implement robust security practices to safeguard sensitive information.

Here are a few techniques that are used to protect data.

• Encryption - the process of converting information or data into a code that is unreadable, especially to prevent unauthorized access. An example would be the Caesar Cipher. It was used by Julius Caesar around 58 BC and would shift letters by a set amount so that “MY SECRET TEXT” would encrypt to “JV PBZOBQ QBUQ”. Decryption would then involve shifting the letters back. More about this encryption can be found at the following video: https://youtu.be/sMOZf4GN3oc

• Access control - only giving access to the people that need to use the data for their job. All others should be denied access to even viewing the data. Perhaps some users would have access to view the data, but not change it.

• Data masking - when printing or creating digital reports of data, certain sensitive fields can be masked away. For example a social security number can be displayed as xxx-xx-5342 or an email address can be shown as g*******8@t****.com.

We also typically make a distinction between data at rest and data in motion.

Data at rest is information stored on an internal or external storage device. Data in transit, also known as data in motion, is data that is being transferred between locations over a private network or the internet. Without strong encryption, data can be vulnerable while it is being transmitted.