Privacy is considered a basic human right but, with so much of our personal data now ‘out there’ in cyberspace, how private can it really be? Data is everywhere, and with rising internet usage, an increase in cloud technologies, and our growing reliance on IoT devices, it continues to grow exponentially. The value of data hasn’t gone unnoticed by cybercriminals, who are particularly interested in getting access to personally identifiable information (PII) they can easily monetize and use for fraudulent purposes. The challenge we’re faced with is that, while our digitized world is largely made possible through data sharing, as individuals we want to maintain our basic right to privacy. This is where data protection comes in.
Data protection regulations put safeguards in place around how businesses use our information. In the past two decades, however, data regulation has evolved dramatically to keep up with rapid developments in technology and the surge in online activity.
In certain industries, such as financial services and healthcare, organizations are more highly-regulated due to the sheer volumes of PII and sensitive data in their possession. This not only makes these industries a prime target for cyber crime, but the amount of structured and historical data these organizations store also warranted investments in machine learning and big data technology, further complicating the challenges to protect the data. The financial services sector has experienced drastic growth in innovative technology in the past few years and, despite our longing for privacy, it seems we can’t get enough of digital solutions. According to Forbes1, customers accessed financial apps a trillion times in 2019 – a figure that was expected to have grown significantly in 2020.
Customers have trusted banks and healthcare organizations to handle their most sensitive personal and financial information for many years. The difference now is that, in a highly-connected and digitized world, the routes to accessing that data have multiplied, making it much more vulnerable to a breach. Not surprisingly, there are a number of data privacy laws in place specifically for these industries, such as the New York Depart of Finance’s NYDFS (US), The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s MAS-TRM (Singapore) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act HIPAA (US).
A data breach can have catastrophic consequences in any industry, but in larger legacy industries such as banking, many businesses have built their customer-base on trust. With so many tech newcomers waiting to take their customers, a publicly-announced data breach could diminish that trust, not to mention incurring severe financial penalties.
As the competition in these industries continues to drive innovation and generate more data, and as organizations prepare their infrastructures for further connectivity, we can expect to see additional privacy regulations being introduced.
Gartner predicts that 65% of people across the world will have their personal data protected by privacy regulations, compared to 10% in 20202.
Data Security has Evolved
Data privacy regulations have adapted to growing data volumes and, in much the same way, data security has evolved to protect the changing environments in which the data resides. Security of data is a critical element of all privacy regulation. For example, in the EU GDPR legislation, data security requirements are set out in Article 32: Security of Processing, while in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), they are covered by section 1978.150 Civil Actions and Data Security.
Thanks to the global move to cloud computing and the extensive adoption of SaaS applications and APIs, offering data discovery and data monitoring solutions, is no longer enough to protect your data and ensure privacy remains intact. When it comes to supporting compliance Imperva takes into account so much more than just database protection by offering an integrated approach combining edge, application and data security to protect your critical financial applications and sensitive customer data.
Meet Data Privacy Compliance with Imperva Data Security
- Imperva Data Security gives you full visibility of Data Access in your infrastructure across applications and hybrid environments to detect unusual behaviors, whether internal or external.
- Imperva protects your websites and applications from a range of threats including DDoS attacks, Bad Bots and application vulnerabilities to reduce online fraud and compliance costs.
- Imperva leverages automation and richer analytics to reduce alert fatigue for your SOC and to accelerate incident response time when a breach is detected.
- Imperva leverages advanced data management and storage methods to retain years of raw data and cost-effectively meet your data privacy compliance obligations.
Imperva Data Security reaches down into the intelligence layer and cuts through the massive quantities of raw data to make it easier and less costly to discover, classify, and analyze sensitive data. You can automatically probe your organization’s data for specific types of sensitive data and trigger appropriate action when required.
Armed with this functionality, organizations can automate subject right request responses, delete PII on-demand and prove regulation compliance to auditors.
To find out more about Imperva Data Privacy solutions, download our Tool Kit today.
1https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/04/15/report-35-85-fintech-growth-on-mobile-thanks-to-coronavirus-after-1-trillion-app-opens-in-2019/?sh=6d1fd51b759a
2https://gdpr.report/news/2020/12/17/the-data-protection-and-privacy-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2021/#:~:text=Gartner%20predicts%20that%2065%25%20of,compared%20to%2010%25%20in%202020.&text=For%20companies%20operating%20internationally%2C%20the,continue%20into%202021%20and%20beyond
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