Evolution of cloud data protection: Why your business needs a Data Command Center

Businesses face increasing hurdles when protecting sensitive data in today's complex digital, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. The truth is that historically, data security has been the core challenge that enterprises have been aiming to tackle given the fact that data breaches have become increasingly common as attackers deploy more sophisticated techniques to cause extensive damage to companies, including monetary losses, reputational harm, and legal penalties.

In this context, deep and proactive data insights are required -- knowing where sensitive data resides or who has access to it is no longer a ‘nice-to-have,’ but a must. However, steps adopted to mitigate these challenges still have a lot to do with data security as a silo, while not necessarily as part of a broader understanding of how data is being used or how it needs to adhere to regulations across the entire organization, which usually comes as an afterthought.

This is where a unified data controls approach emerges as a powerful strategy. Businesses can bridge the gap between data silos by establishing a centralized data command center to strengthen their data security in tandem with privacy and compliance controls while governing data use throughout the organization.

The Need for Enhanced Data Protection

Exponential data growth, a dynamic threat landscape, increasing and evolving regulations, and new technologies -- such as generative AI -- have exacerbated the issue of how to properly protect data. There is a growing chasm between security, governance, compliance, and privacy teams and their understanding of sensitive and personal data -- something that needs to be addressed in order to build stronger data controls.

Through a unified approach to data protection, organizations can understand their data risk profile, identify emerging risk areas promptly, and implement necessary controls independently of where data resides and the type of data system. This is a new mindset that takes into consideration the integration of security, governance, privacy, and compliance as a whole, instead of silos that can result in data breaches, regulatory penalties, and difficulty in sharing data with data analyst teams.

Understanding and Implementing a Data Command Center

Understanding the function and capabilities of a Data Command Center in strengthening data protection is essential. A Data Command Center empowers multiple teams in an organization that manage data security, privacy, compliance, and governance, with centralized data intelligence and automated controls to reduce the cost and complexity of managing data risk in hyperscale, multicloud data environments more efficiently.

Through this unified approach, businesses can leverage a holistic view of their sensitive data to implement robust safeguards, as well as  a centralized console to categorize data based on sensitivity levels, ultimately strategically prioritizing risk mitigation steps. Using data intelligence and automation, organizations can improve the security posture of data systems, limit user access to data, provide granular access controls, mask sensitive data when sharing it with internal or external teams, enforce data privacy and compliance, and monitor real-time data usage to swiftly respond to external threats.     

In essence, a Data Command Center streamlines security, governance, privacy, and compliance, providing integrated intelligence and controls for data across hybrid, multi-cloud architectures, all while fulfilling all data-related obligations. It involves:

• Strengthening security: As organizations amass data, much of it becomes "dark data." Examples include data collected through human communications and logs -- information needed to drive business, but that has little use later. The majority of enterprise data now finds its home in the cloud, hence why traditional cloud security tools lack visibility into cloud data, especially dark data. This blindspot can lead to undetected sensitive and personal data, increasing the risk of data breaches.

A Data Command Center enables a data-centric security approach to managing security posture across hybrid, multi-cloud environments and SaaS applications. By providing deep insights into sensitive data, it equips organizations to mitigate risks arising due to human errors such as system misconfigurations and over-privileged cloud entitlements.

• Governing data use: Achieving a delicate equilibrium between data sharing and data protection is challenging. Effective data governance policies and standards play a pivotal role in striking the balance between restrictions and accessibility to data by automating data controls. When implemented effectively, a Data Command Center renders seamless control and facilitates streamlined data access and usage throughout the company. In fact, it encourages secure data sharing with internal and external teams, thus empowering organizations to harness the complete potential of their data.

• Honoring privacy rights: Data privacy laws vary globally, with different definitions of sensitive data and specific requirements for its collection, retention, and protection. In this context, it is crucial to monitor sensitive data, including its type, location, and user access, while adhering to applicable regulations. A Data Command Center also automates privacy operations to ensure data processing aligns with evolving data regulations, subject rights, and consent preferences. Since personal data is owned by individuals and entrusted to organizations, they require a unified approach for handling personal data responsibly and respecting the privacy rights of its owners.

• Ensuring regulatory compliance: Compliance with regulations involves assessing data controls and gathering evidence of enforcement from multiple teams, including data security, privacy, and governance. Each team must understand varying regulations by country, region, and data type. Manual compliance assessments are time-consuming, inefficient, and risky, but through this approach, teams can enhance team collaboration by automating compliance assessments, simplifying evidence collection, bridging gaps, and bolstering confidence in results presented to regulators.

Implementing a Data Command Center is essential for businesses to holistically address the data security, governance, privacy, and compliance of their enterprise. By unifying all data controls under a single Data Command Center, leaders can establish a solid foundation for safeguarding sensitive data, mitigating risks, and gaining stakeholder confidence in an interconnected world. Beyond that, they will be able to unlock all the real value of their data across the enterprise, including the application of innovative technologies such as Generative AI while ensuring they effectively meet their data protection obligations.

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Nikhil Girdhar is Senior Director of Data Security at Securiti.ai.