A recent report recommends a “new mindset, ” in which companies focus more on the protection of the data itself than on securing the perimeter.
Last year, hackers shifted their focus from targeting financial institutions to infiltrating the large databases of social media and entertainment sites, according to a new study. Hackers also used encryption for 4 percent of breaches to render that data unreadable and then demanded ransom from those organizations and their customers. Because of this transition, the Gemalto report, ” 2016 Mining for Database Gold, ” recommends a “new mindset, ” in which companies focus more on the protection of the data itself than on securing the perimeter. Although this strategy implies accepting breaches as inevitable, the report says it also means that “security can be built around the understanding that the movement and sharing of data is fundamental to business success.” The report recommends encrypting all sensitive data, securely storing and managing all encryption keys, and controlling access and authentication of users. The report is based on data from security firm Gemalto’s 2016 breach-level index, which includes data from internet searches, news articles and analyses, and other sources. It gathered data on the number of breaches, data records lost, data breaches by industry and country, the type of breach and the source.
