UC Advanced - issue #4

DATA SECURITY

Keeping the Company Safe As data becomes more valuable, how can businesses ensure it won’t be stolen?

Now that every company is rolling out a form of Generative AI tool, one of the predictions of the decade may be realised: data is the new currency. In order to generate the emails, articles, and general admin that needs to be done, there needs to be a database to draw inspiration from. As a result, Research and Markets estimate that the global market for Big Data was worth US$154.9 Billion in the year 2022, and is projected to reach a revised size of US$353.9 Billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% between 2022 and 2030. In the face of this explosion, many have turned to cloud storage to hold the data they have efficiently. According to Prashant Ketkar, Head of Customer Experience Automation Transformation at Hexaware Technologies, this data explosion is a result of the launch of the iPhone and Amazon Web Services. “Two core secular trends are driving this move to cloud,” said Ketkar. “The first is the introduction of the iPhone and around the same time, Amazon Web Services came out with their first offering around distributed storage.

“With the iPhone and Android devices, a simple example is the camera on my phone today is as good as a camera I could buy 10 years ago. So it’s no surprise that this data is getting created at the rate of knots every day. “On top of that, we’ve seen massive advances in distributed computing on server- side technologies. With these virtualized technologies, businesses can scale to millions of servers, which now makes storing the data that is created cheap, secure, and available.” What’s out there? As we’ve seen, this explosion of data has led to it being one of the more valuable assets businesses can own. But with this new value comes the threat that someone may take it away from them. Ransomware, for example, has been “around forever” according to Jamie Moles, Senior Technical Manager at ExtraHop, but the threat is evolving. “What’s changing is the business model of the threat actors behind ransomware. “Ten years ago ransomware was a shotgun approach, sending out a virus to a lot of email addresses to try to get in. Just like marketing always says, a one per cent success rate for mail shots is good, ransomware operators were operating in a similar way. “But they got wise and started using things like phishing to target their campaigns, which led to defences getting smarter as well.” These defences, according to Tom Mercer Commercial Director of GAIN LINE, “incorporate advanced security features such as encryption, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems. These features help to secure data and prevent unauthorised access. However, hackers are also becoming more sophisticated, and new threats are constantly emerging. “One of the ways storage solutions are under threat is through phishing attacks. These attacks involve cybercriminals sending emails that appear to be from a reputable

Prashant Ketkar Head of Customer Experience Automation Transformation

hexaware.com

They got wise and started using things like phishing to target their

campaigns, which led to defences

getting smarter as well.

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