Secure Data Exchanges Don't Have to Sacrifice Efficiency
Hitting “send” is as routine and frequent as sipping on coffee for many employees. And uploading a file to a third-party, vendor, or another colleague happens with that same automatic mind-set. Outside of the IT team, many employees don’t actually give a lot of thought to the journey of the data they are sending out.
The value of the data exchanged each day is often not a factor in the workday routine. However, with thousands of transactions like this happening each day, this data is potentially exposed when placed outside of the organizational security structure. Opportunists and cybercriminals are highly aware of the data’s value and work diligently to exploit these often-laissez-faire transactions.
Related Reading: The 5 Biggest Cybersecurity Threats of 2022: How to Avoid Cybersecurity Attacks
Secure Data Exchanges and Efficiency Can Coexist
The scenario above, where employees freely send and receive data that is the lifeblood of most organizations unfortunately opens risks to that data The good news is, this risky business can be remedied with solutions designed to enforce strong security policies while simultaneously working to keep business humming along efficiently.
Most organizations are already highly aware that they hold sensitive data in their hands. They may not, however, realize just how many of their employees actually handle this data day to day and how they are doing so.
The policies around data security are more specific if an organization is regulated, such as healthcare, finance, transportation, and others. These industries must meet compliance requirements for GDPR, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, FISMA, and more. Not adhering to the specific security requirements for handling data at the various stages in its journey can lead to hefty fines and/or sanctions. Compliant file sharing standards vary but common requirements include:
- Using encrypted connections to share files both on-premises and in the cloud
- Encrypting files to ensure data integrity
- Demonstrating secure data transfer methods
- Providing audit logs to an auditor
On-Demand Webinar: How to Improve Security and Efficiency for Your File Transfers
Often, organizations start to realize the extent of their data vulnerability when they examine their training procedures, or when they deal with vendors with specific requirements for how data is transferred. The worst way to discover data is inadequately protected is to experience a data breach or threat. This can kick off costly, time-consuming mitigation and have a negative impact on the reputation of the organization for years to come.
Too often, data security does not play a factor in the average employee's day. If it isn't part of the person's job, it's simply not top of mind. That’s where solutions, such as managed file transfer (MFT), data loss prevention (DLP), data classification, and email security can take on the role of automatically securing that data and make a huge difference in how consistently and thoroughly data security measures are applied.
How are Organizations Trying to Move Data Securely Now?
It goes without saying most employees are not just hitting “send” without any regard, but without the deeper level of understanding of a particular data’s value and the threats to it, some enterprising individuals or departments may decide to take on this security function on their own. Organizations may see people pick and choose from free or low-cost consumer file transfer tools or try to apply the simple “read-only” setting to “protect” data they are transferring.
Or perhaps they go a step further and limit who can have access to data. These siloed security measures often inadvertently remove the very resources knowledge workers need to conduct business. As a result, efficiency declines as it becomes too burdensome to get needed information to make critical decisions or interact with individuals outside the organization who need some level of data access.
How Should Organizations Approach a Secure Data Exchange Strategy?
To keep data secure and keep business operations and relationships running smoothly and efficiently, organizations should try to focus on what impact security policies put in place might have on their customer and vendor relationships:
- Do the policies and tools you implement hinder your employees?
- Does the technology slow down the actual delivery of information?
- Is the technology too complex for most employees to readily adopt it for use?
Ideally, data security measures should be invisible and automated. Putting measures in place that address the issues above will go a long way in helping employees adopt the specific measures. “Employees know they need to address data security concerns; they don’t, however, want to have to jump through substantial or unnecessary hoops to use the tools provided to address them,” said Chris Spargen, Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering for Fortra.
Related Reading: File Transfer Productivity Tips
Education: Key to Successful Data Security Policy Measures
When adding new security measures to employees’ workday routines, it’s important to communicate why you are putting that policy or tool in place. Employees that have an initial understanding of how important data security is tend to then work with their trading partners outside of the organization in better, more secure ways.
For example, if a trading partner offers a web portal, and an SFTP server to receive data files, you would want your employee to choose the SFTP option because it offers better security for the data being exchanged. By helping them become more aware of the value of using the more secure options and by making it easy for them to choose that secure option, you can rest easier.
“Adopting new data security measures is a journey. Embrace it. Often a layered approach, rolled out in phases, with key influencers in the organization championing these best practices and adoption can solidify the data security mindset amongst employees,” added Spargen.
Related reading: Developing a Plan for Data Risk Management
How Does Automation Change How Data is Secured?
Hitting send or receiving an email involves hundreds of automated processes most people never give a second thought to and that’s a good thing when organizations employ managed file transfer and the automation that goes along with it.
Organizations with strong data security look at each data transfer event and thoughtfully apply policies – encryption, audit, validation of the user, validation of the recipient, redaction, etc. The beauty of this approach is that the employees do not have to handle any of that activity, so work gets done quickly and efficiently and, yes, securely.
“Data automation is becoming more and more of a factor for many organizations, especially with dispersed workforces. Automating the data exchange process can not only help accelerate and streamline the process of transfer data, it can also elevate the level of security around it as the risk of human error is greatly reduced,” said Chris Baily, Senior Product Manager, Fortra. “If people don’t have to think about the data and instead rely upon more established and automated policies around the data, it is better protected from the start.”
What Prevents Organizations from Automating Data Security?
Often what stalls the move to more automation around data security is bloat – simply too many tools in use already. A centralized tool, such as GoAnywhere MFT, with its dashboard-style interface can get that movement started. Rather than having separate tools for encryption, auditing and reporting, and automating file transfers, a robust tool like GoAnywhere can handle it all and can scale as your needs scale.
Organizations currently using more than one tool to manage secure file transfers should be taking a look at the problems each of those tools actually address. Often you can reduce the number of interfaces to better focus on to the features most important to your organization.
What Tools Can Automatically Apply Security Policies to Data?
Layering a variety of data security solutions delivers optimal protection for data at any stage of its journey. Solutions should be considered dependent on the value of the data needing the protection. Key solutions for organizations to consider incorporating to better automate and streamline their data exchanges include:
- Managed File Transfer
- Secure ICAP Gateway
- Data Classification
- Data Loss Prevention
- Digital Rights Management
Fortra Experts Weigh in on Streamlining the Exchange of Data
Fortra experts, Chris Spargen and Chris Bailey, discuss the various obstacles and barriers to streamlining data exchanges and present how various solutions can overcome those barriers in this on-demand webinar. Learn about what a secure data exchange maturity model looks like, hear some real-life examples of how organizations automated their data exchanges by adding on additional functionality as needed, and get an inside look at what a file transfer actually looks like security-wise.
