There are two types of entrepreneurs, those who view piling data as a burden, and those who view it as great pool of knowledge – which can be used for determining patterns that will increase their company’s productivity and profitability. All companies run by entrepreneurs from the first group end up on the long list consisted of more than 90% of businesses that shut down during first phases of their development. Entrepreneurs from the second group on the other hand have much better chances to succeed.
Unfortunately entrepreneurs are not the only people who realize the importance of big data. Cyber-criminals also realize how many useful information is hidden behind peta- and zettabytes of data, which is why we witnessed several big data breaches in recent few years.
Risks associated with big data technology
As completely new concept and technology, big data is associated with many different risks. These are just some of them:
- Any technology which is not understood and lacks expert help comes with many vulnerabilities;
- It is being processed by open-source code, which usually come with unexpected backdoor and default credentials;
- User authentication from various locations is usually not controlled in the right way;
- There is a huge chance for malicious data input;
- Companies often don’t fulfill regulatory requirements, etc;
Ashely Madison case- How destructive data breaches can be?
One of the biggest data breaches happened in 2015, when the group called Impact Team hacked Ashley Madison, website specialized in enabling people to have extra-marital affairs. We took this case as an example of how disastrous these breaches can be for companies as well as their clients.
Scooped data was released to the public and resulted in $576 million class-action lawsuit, CEO’s resignation and probably thousands of divorces and extortion e mails. In addition to all that, analysts from Gizmondo magazine decided to jump in, and they determined that only 12,000 of 5,5 million female profiles are active on this network, and that only 9,700 ever responded to a message. This data breach marked the end of Ashley Madison’s controversial popularity and the beginning of an era in which big data security and marriage vows will be taken more seriously.
Security systems
Important data should be stored in-house, and cloud and big data should be inextricably connected. When dealing with big data security some companies use attribute based encryption, which enables applying access controls.
Companies also need to use smart Security Incident and Event Management systems or their commercial replacements for big data security deployment. This system often use big data to detect advanced persistent threats.
Using big data to protect your big data sounds brilliant and gives us the chance to see this concept in all of its glory.
Importance of backup
Regular backup is one of the most important processes in big data protection. Although backup won’t secure your data from cyber-attacks, it will story copy of it in the safe place, which will enable you to bring your business back to its feet quickly, even after the most destructive data breaches. Since big data storages contain thousands of terabytes of information, they are very hard to back up.
Local disks are the best solution for big data backup. They allow you to do local restores, which are much faster, in case something goes wrong. Companies also need to have smart data backup systems, which apply fast scanning processes that can save you huge amounts of time.
Data security- Company’s number one concern
One security system, no matter how advanced and innovative it is, can’t protect company’s data without help from security experts and other company employees. Security experts need to be available 24/7, which can be done with using remote support software.
Company employees need to be informed about company’s security policies and should pass different kinds of security trainings tailored specifically for their job positions. Company should also have emergency strategy that will limit destructive effects of data breaches.
Big data concept offers many possibilities for increasing big and small business’ productivity and profits, and combined with smart risk-management and long list of security measures it brings even more benefits to company’s business model.
The way we do business in the future will be formed by big data researches, and only the entrepreneurs who realize all benefits this concept brings and importance of securing it from outside influence will be able to perfectly model their future business moves and increase their company’s competitiveness.
