Data Respect- 5 elements to consider

Data respect cannot be compared to the respect for the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in defense of our freedom.

By no means, is this post, even an attempt to make that comparison.

Unfortunately, forgetting is one of our signature traits as human beings.  We forget some of the most significant milestones, accomplishments and sacrifice. We forget the pain and suffering of others while we indulge in our self made cocoons.

Unless reminded, we would forget the blood shed to defend our liberty.

I love that Memorial Day forces us to remember. And not just remember, but insists, that we show respect. It is a phenomenal opportunity to focus on ‘respect’ in its various forms.

 Data Respect is one such form.

This post focus is your  Unstructured data. We will explore your  Structured data in the near future.

Data Respect is the platform from which Data Access Governance springs. It is the  acknowledgement that an automated, scalable, inter-operable platform to govern data exists.

Employees create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other files on corporate file shares, SharePoint sites and the Cloud.  Manual methods for the management and security of  these types of data present significant challenges in the face of legacy point products.

Modern cyber security teams seek automated, effective solutions – not standalone technology that must be manually operated.

Solutions that seamlessly integrate or communicate with Identity Access Management (IAM) systems, HR systems, and other applications to facilitate automated workflows to secure sensitive data must be accounted for in the data strategy process.  The strategy must demand the  application of a consistent permissions model and enforce least-privileged access control.

Data Respect – 5 considerations

• Permissions Reporting and Remediation

A solution that makes it easy to see who has access to sensitive content or what a particular user is able to across file severs, NAS, SharePoint, Office365, OneDrive, Box, and Dropbox is essential.

Additionally, it must flag risky conditions in a browser based portal where you can model and simulate permissions before being applied to a production environment.

Furthermore, inherent in its process must be the power and flexibility to  allow the Data architect to set a standard permissions model and apply it uniformly across all access control lists (ACLs).

• Sensitive Data Discovery

Secondly, a solution that scans the contents of hundreds of document types, even image files using advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is important.  It must also use out-of-the-box rules to meet government and industry compliance standards or add custom criteria specific to your organization’s standards.

• Data Classification and Marking

It must also be able to read and write file classification tags to enhance governance and increase the effectiveness of your encryption or data-in-motion security tools.

• Extend your Identity Access (IAM) Strategy

An open and flexible architecture is critical  and must seamlessly integrate with any Identity Access Management (IAM) system of your choice to extend roles and entitlement reviews into unstructured data.

• File Activity Monitoring

A full audit trail of every file touch with all the details must be maintained. Your chosen solution should be able to detect what happened to a missing file or see who has been looking at sensitive content.  Activity collection also helps to identify and revoke stale or excessive permissions without interruption to your organization.

 Data Respect – Does your Data Governance strategy pass the acid test?

It does if you can:

• Implement least-privileged access controls
• Track the precise forensic history of file access
• Automate security and compliance policies
• Decrease operations expense and storage costs

Go ahead, salute the memory of our veterans and respect your data!