Network World

This token gesture secures sensitive data

Data loss is a huge problem for organizations of all sizes and in all industries. In 2008, the Verizon Business RISK Team investigated 90 breaches in which more than 285 million records were compromised. Most of those records involved sensitive payment card data. The thieves who pilfered the records then turned around and sold or used the information for fraudulent purposes -- in other words, to steal money from our credit and debit accounts.

These are just some of the breaches that we know about, making them the tip of the iceberg. Many more instances occur every day involving sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, customer account information, intellectual property, authentication credentials, corporate financial data and more.

Many organizations have turned to data encryption to protect sensitive data. While encrypting data is certainly an improvement over using, moving and storing it in plain text form, encryption has its drawbacks. It can be expensive and cumbersome to manage the keys to encrypt and decrypt the information, especially if the organization wants to use the data in numerous applications. For instance, a retail business may want to use customer payment card data to provide loyalty rewards or to analyze buying trends. Each of these applications would need the means to decrypt the data while it's in use and re-encrypt it afterward.
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Recent Newsletters | Archive

• The notification chain when a breach is suspected 07/02/09
• 90 data breaches in 2008: What went wrong 06/26/09
• How to dramatically cut costs on network performance monitoring 06/19/09
• How to manage the risk of your high-risk users 06/12/09