Part I of Seclore’s top six data security predictions focused on a few pandemic drivers such as working from home and accessing data in the cloud that have increased the need for data-centric security. Here are Seclore’s last three data security predictions for 2021:
Prediction #4 –Maximize and Integrate Existing Security Tools for Better Data Protection
When the pandemic struck, the economy’s downturn was swift as many organizations saw their sales pipelines stall, except for a few, like Zoom, that took off. Organizations immediately froze spending, hiring, or laid-off workers to weather the storm. We saw organizations evaluating their existing tools to see how they could optimize and better integrate them within their architecture during this time.
We believe in 2021 that organizations will look to security tools that will provide them a unified cybersecurity platform and focus on protecting the data itself. Security vendors that offer a platform or those that allow seamless integration between best-of-breed, data-centric security and enterprise applications will be required.
We also predict that organizations will need to automatically add file-level protection on documents as they are discovered, classified, downloaded from content management systems, and shared via email and file-sharing services. If data is blocked, productivity goes down, and if it is monitored, it goes out unprotected. Either approach, blocking or monitoring of data, prevents secure collaboration when employees work from home. Protecting data wherever it travels will become essential in 2021.
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Prediction # 5 – Stricter Requirements for Data Protection Laws
Compliance seems to make the list every year, no doubt. However, this year, the Schrems ll decision made in July 2020 tightens data protection rules around data privacy. Schrems ll changes how the EU views data transfers to the US and nullifies protections under the Privacy Shield. In a nutshell, it is a clash between US surveillance laws and EU data protection under GDPR. Now contractual clauses will need to be made between organizations as their relationships relate to data transfer. The impact of Schrems ll Europe to US organizations is a fundamental change to the framework to process and transfer EU data. However, it’s not only the EU that is tightening data privacy regulations. Every country across the APAC region, India, and the Middle East are also tightening or adopting data privacy regulations.
US organizations have instituted many new policies and procedures since GDPR that came into effect in 2018. We predict that data will need to be protected at the source to meet the demanding data protection laws’ demanding requirements. The world is becoming borderless, making it challenging to contain information within a country’s borders to ensure its safety. If you look back to the castle and moat scenario, you can’t keep all the data locked up so that it’s protected. The data will need to travel, and when it does, it will need armor around it.
Prediction # 6 – Separation Between Data Protection and Threat Prevention Goals
Data protection and threat prevention goals are often intertwined. We see this changing in 2021 as no amount of threat prevention is going to meet data protection goals. Threat prevention focuses on policies and tools that protect the corporate network, whereas data protection safeguards sensitive information from loss wherever it travels. The Data Protection and the Risk and Compliance teams may overlap, but their goals are very different.
In 2021, we predict the Data Protection and Risk and Compliance teams will be separate and clarify how they will achieve their respective goals. Threat Prevention teams will focus on enterprise-wide security and governance programs to identify data security policy gaps. In contrast, Data Protection teams will focus on keeping data protected, whether at-rest, in-transit, in-use, or shared with third-parties.
Conclusion
During the first half of the pandemic, organizations focused on business continuity by setting up employees to work from home. Now they have shifted to protecting the data, especially in the cloud, so that remote employees can collaborate internally and externally without interruption. Data protection regulations around the transfer of personal information between countries have also become more stringent during the pandemic. In summary, the pandemic has intensified the need to protect data at the source, as corporate walls and country borders have disappeared.
Don’t miss Heidi Shey, Principal Analyst at Forrester serving Security and Risk Professionals, discuss with Seclore’s CEO why data-centric security is imperative to Zero Trust. Note: Recording is available until March 1, 2021.
Vishal comes with more than a decade of experience in sales, marketing and business management. He is the Founder and CEO of Seclore and handles corporate development, investor relations and strategic vision.
Vishal is an IIT Bombay (Electrical Engineering) graduate and a specialist in biometric security systems. His ideation in fingerprint imaging led to the development of the core technology behind Herald Logic, a company he founded in 2000. The company showed record 220% CAGR, spreading to Singapore, Australia and UK.
Vishal is also an active participant in physics activities with the IAPT (Indian Association of Physics Teachers) and NSEP (National Standard Examination in Physics), he is amongst the top 1% in the country in physics.
He is an active sports person, a keen blogger on information security solutions and an intrepid speaker at various information security forum.
