In the rapidly evolving landscape of data security, the need for robust measures has never been more critical. Just 18 months ago, only 3 out of 10 of our daily customer conversations prioritised data security as their key topic. Fast forward to today, and this number has surged to 9 out of 10 customers, fundamentally redefining the conversations ITC is having with its customers and reshaping their priorities.
Why is Data Security a Rising Concern?
- Digital Transformation: As organisations undergo digital transformation, their data becomes a valuable and sensitive asset. The volume of data generated and processed increases exponentially, making it more challenging to secure.
- Increasing Cyber Attacks: Cyber attacks, including those targeting supply chains, are on the rise, posing significant threats to data integrity and security.
- AI-Powered Attacks: New types of attack now include AI, which makes it easier for hackers to target multiple organisations at the same time, with a level of sophistication never seen before.
- Regulations: Compliance with ever-evolving regulations adds complexity to data security. Organisations need to ensure they are both handling customer data appropriately and implementing controls to safeguard data, ensuring resilience and monitoring their infrastructure to comply with regulations.
- Technology Complexity: The use and integration of multiple technologies introduces additional layers of complexity in managing and securing data. Without a unified approach, organisations lose time and money trying to rein in all the controls.
Cyber crime continues to grow, not least because it is proving to be a lucrative business to be in. IBM reports a 10% year-on-year increase in the cost of data breaches. With 90% of the world’s data generated in the last two years and doubling every four years, combined with increasing regulatory requirements, the challenge is immense. The migration to cloud, increasing edge devices, hybrid, and remote working environments, along with the impact and adoption of generative AI, further complicates the landscape. Staff shortages and third-party supply chain risks add to the urgency.
The Unified Approach to Data Security
While the problem is clear, the solution is not always straightforward. However, there is a unified approach that can simplify the process. Today, organisations often have too many security tools with differing levels of data security maturity and often just don’t know where to start on their data security journey. ITC’s approach, powered by Microsoft Purview, offers a unified solution, with a pragmatic step by step approach, built on four key building blocks:
- Know Your Data: Gain proactive control of your data.
- Protect Your Data: Set up controls to detect and respond to threats.
- Prevent Data Loss: Ensure secure sharing and exchange of data.
- Govern Your Data: Implement effective data governance practices.
To begin by effectively knowing your data, adopting the crawl-walk-run approach is essential.
Step One: Crawl
You can’t protect what you don’t know. Begin by understanding where your data is and gaining visibility. Microsoft Purview provides native access to your data via Microsoft 365, including third-party tools, enabling automatic discovery. Identify and classify your data to prioritise sensitive information.
→ Start by identifying, classifying, and understanding your data.
Step Two: Walk
Next, monitor your data. Purview offers sensitivity labels to automatically detect data types and apply real-time policies to prevent data theft, leaks, and accidental oversharing. While labelling is straightforward, adoption can be challenging. Establish a clear set of rules so employees understand data security concepts, translating these into actionable policies. Refine alerts to reduce noise, ensuring that the right alerts are managed proactively. Early detection of threats significantly reduces risks.
→ Focus on labelling, adoption, and establishing clear rules.
Step Three: Run
Finally, be proactive. Excessive data access is a significant challenge, with 57% of companies globally identifying it as their top data issue due to oversharing and relaxed access controls. Purview leverages AI-driven insights to detect abnormal activity, preventing data theft and leaks by applying consistent, real-time policies. Once policies are defined, they must be proactively monitored and adapted to fit your organisation.
→ Implement consistent policies, refine them, and leverage real-time insights to manage threats and risks proactively.
Beyond Security
Purview complements Extended Detection and Response (XDR) by adding a layer of data governance to enhance threat detection and incident response. It offers unified automated compliance through built-in templates, including data retention. Data discovery at scale is facilitated by generative AI, which identifies risks and provides real-time insights to prioritise alerts. Microsoft has recently extended Purview’s protection coverage to generative AI, monitoring the use of AI tools within organisations and ensuring the data used in those tools is secure and clean, in turn driving innovation and business cases for AI.
Getting Started
ITC will always recommend starting with a clear plan and defined business outcomes. Understand that this is a journey, not a destination. Avoid trying to solve everything at once. Remember: don’t run before you can walk. Then deploy refinement cycles to continuously improve your data security posture.
By adopting the crawl-walk-run approach to data security, organisations can systematically build a robust, proactive, and unified strategy to protect their data in an increasingly complex digital world. If you’d like help with how to get started or to speak with a Microsoft expert, please get in touch here.
