We must consider Data security from various angles. Whatever the purpose, personal or professional, we must evaluate each single risk and decide which measures to consider to improve the data security and ease the data recovery in case of an accident.
Only an in depth analysis of a given risk may bring up a relevant solution to protect your data.
Technical issues are not the only one. As soon as an organization, of any size, is involved, the human behaviour is a main concern for the organization's data protection. This information set may help consider the data security risks, methods and solutions.
Data security management
What does involve data security?
Data security management involves the integrity and availability of data and as well as the protection against data breaches, data loss and data theft. As such, data security involves both behavioural related risks and technology related risks. Among technology related risks, database protection and network protection are main issues. We dedicate another column to the privacy and confidentiality issues, seen from the angle of managing and protecting third party data.
Most of the rules that apply for risk management apply as well for data security management. Consider that accurate and timely risk information reduces the risk. Identify and monitor your exposure to data security risk in any process where important data are involved.
The importance of data is sometimes hard to evaluate. For corporate data or private data, you can roughly measure the importance of data from three criteria: the confidentiality of the data, their uniqueness - the data may be recreated or not -, the time needed to recreate the data if lost and the related costs.
Obviously, data that are not unique, not confidential and can be quickly re-created do not require so much protection
Business insurance
The security of corporate data may as well imply a business insurance to protect the business against the risk of data loss and data theft. The most secure way to calculate the value of the risk to insure, if not the easiest, is to evaluate the cost the data replacement and the sales loss, in case of a disaster. Such evaluation may be based on various criteria: the time needed to recreate the data when possible, the external costs involved, if relevant the cost of the client's indemnifications and the sales loss during the post-disaster period. The sales, not the profit, if the business continuation is targeted.
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About password security
With various applications or with OS such as Unix / Linux, the ability to protect the data from intrusions and get it back relies mainly on the password. As main guardian, the password must be strong and must be protected itself. Frenquently changing the important passwords and choosing good passwords is a requirement. Some basic rules for building strong passwords:
- Letters used must not form an existing word in any language.
- It isn't good to choose names.
- A minimum of 8 characters is necessary; when allowed, it is preferable to mix lower case and upper case, if possible numbers and if possible characters such as ! + *, etc..
Why? To avoid that the password may be broken by a robot in a reasonable amount of time.
You should have a precise procedure for the storage and the memorization of your passwords. For each password type, analyse the nature of the risk: network intrusion, phisical intrusion in the building, other people accessing your computer, etc. Then choose the solution and the media in relation with the real nature of the risk.
If you have lost your Windows password, you must know that there are some password recovery software.
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