Tag Archive for: Data Loss Prevention

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Cloud Backup: Small Businesses Hesitate at their Own Peril

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Cloud Backup
According to a recent survey of IT service firms conducted by The 2112 Group, small and mid-size businesses (SMBs with up to 250 employees) do not respond to most marketing efforts.  The lack of interest appears to be due to underlying concerns about data security, bandwidth, availability, and recurring costs.

Not surprisingly, SMBs become interested in cloud backup after a data loss or downtime. Having experienced disruption or loss, SMBs better understand the cost of a failed recovery compared with the cost of adequate protection.

Businesses that move to cloud backup sited their primary motivations as:

  • Improved data protection and business continuity (34%)
  • Better overall IT reliability (20%)
  • Reduced IT costs (16%)

The challenge for us, as a cloud solutions provider, is to meet our customers’ objectives while addressing issues of security, bandwidth, availability, and cost.

The challenge for SMBs, as our customer or prospective customer, is to recognize the value of cloud-based backup before a crisis.  And, understand that by offering a range of solutions, we can ensure data integrity while keeping costs in-line.

 

Cloud File Sync & Sharing: Risks and Solutions (Part 2)

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Secure Cloud This blog post is the second in a series on the data risks and solutions available for file sync and sharing services.

Your employees are using file sharing services. Ignoring reality or denying its existence will not change the fact that today’s tech users want to easily share files, and that they will circumvent IT if needed.

Understand the Technology.  Many organizations are using file sync services to share and backup files.  A poor understanding of how file sync services, however, can result in data corruption and loss.

Sync Basics. Most sync services keep a copy of your files on your local machine and in cloud storage, with synchronization happening for files saved in specific directories on your local machine.  In other words, you open and work on files locally.  When you save them in a sync folder (or folder tree), the file will be synchronized with the version in the cloud.  Files may also be used and saved using more traditional upload and download techniques. If you share a file with another person, they will download, or sync, a copy of the file to their local desktop.  This means that if you both are editing a document at the same time, you are both working locally on different copies of the file.  While some sync services offer basic file locking, most will allow the conflict to occur.  Data may be easily lost as each person syncs and overwrites the changes of the other. Better sync services offer multiple level or permissions, allowing you to restrict access to view versus edit.  Some services will also prevent downloading and printing.

Sync versus Backup. File sync is NOT backup.  If you overwrite or delete a file, those changes are synced to the server and to other users.  While some sync services offer version control with a limited ability to retrieve prior versions, most sync services quickly propagate errors and deletions. As such, sync is not a reliable technology for data restores.

When to Sync? Sync and sharing services can be part of a robust business continuity strategy. With near-real time updates, a local or remote service outage does not mean loss of access to files, or loss of operating data. Sync and sharing services are also useful for sharing files with outside parties, provided your users understand the limitations of the service. If you allow the use of sync and share services, however, make sure your team is using a company-owned and managed account and a business grade service.  We will discuss why this is so critical in our next installment.

Previous Post in the Series

Guest Post: Two Customer Reactions to a Data Breach

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Originally posted by Bob Siegel, CEO of The Privacy Ref, this article looks at how a company’s response to a data breach can do as much damage as the breach itself.

TD Bank has notified their customers of a data breach through the  loss of a backup tape. Initial reports have said that the tapes contain  the account information and Social Security numbers of more than 267,000 customers on the US East Coast. The tape was not encrypted so, while the bank is unaware of any misuse of the information, anyone who does obtain the tape could easily read the information it contains.

I was with some TD Bank customers the day the data breach was acknowledged. There were two comments made that I hear anytime a breach occurs so I wanted to share them to help you protect your brand image in the event of a data loss.

It took too long to notify customers of the data breach

The first comment the people I spoke with made was that six months was too long for the bank to notify customers that a data breach occurred. TD Bank has said that they were investigating the incident during this period. The customers I spoke with took the view that the bank either had the tape or they didn’t, so why did it take so long to be notified. The customers felt that the delay put their accounts at further risk as well as increasing their exposure to identity theft.

Notice of a data breach to your customers needs to be timely. The definition of timely rests on the perception of the customer. Any time beyond the customers’ perception of timely may be seen as the investigation not having been a priority or, as seen by the comments above, that you are putting the customers at additional risk.

The more complex a breach is perceived to be the more time customers will tolerate for notification. For example, an intrusion into your systems is perceived to take longer to investigate than something that has been misplaced.

More should have been done to protect against the data breach

Hindsight is 20/20 and we begin thinking “if only we had….”. Hopefully we wil learn from each others’ experiences and improve our own programs.

In this case more should have been done to protect the data. TD Bank has customers in Massachusetts.  MA 201 CMR 17.00 provides standards of protection for personal information for residents of this commonwealth. Under this statute, the encryption of personal data that resides on portable devices is required. Personal information under the Massachusetts law includes financial account information or social security number in conjunction with first name or initial and last name. Massachusetts includes tapes as portable storage devices.

In my conversations with the bank’s customers they began to question the overall security procedures used in the bank’s data processing. This may be a large leap in thinking, but one that someone unfamiliar with IT practices may make.

Privacy professionals today recognize that for any organization it is not if a data breach will occur, but when will it occur. How the public perceives your communications about, response to, and the circumstances of the breach will have an impact on your brand image. Preparing a response plan before a data breach occurs is something every organization should do to minimize any impacts, including  brand damage, that may occur.

 

Tuesday Take Away: DLP in Google Apps

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In at least one prior post, we have written about the nature of data protection and the reasons for backing up information in the cloud.  Backupify, one of the vendors we work with often, recently conducted  a study of known data loss incidents in Google Apps with known resolutions.   Here is what they learned:

  • 0.00% = Due to Google systems or software
  • 4.05% = Due to an integrated, third party application
  • 10.81% = Due to unauthorized use of a users’ credentials
  • 85.14% = Due to user action

What does this mean?

For most Google Apps users, the best mechanism for Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is to protect your data from user error and malicious acts.  In other words, back up your data!  Assess your needs with respect to retention period and retention points, and pick the backup solution that best meets your business needs.  And remember, backups solutions for Google Docs should do more than export with conversion.

In addition, users should understand the importance and risks involved in sharing account information or using weak passwords.  If you want to enforce best practices, consider Google Apps Directory Sync or an affordable Single Sign-On (SSO) solution.

Drop us a note if you want to know more.