Encryption is the Baseline Solution Every Company Should Have

Major cyber breaches are consistently hitting the headlines, with successful attacks causing lasting damage to brands and costing businesses in excess of an estimated $400 billion a year.

Perimeter security, such as firewalls and anti-virus software, are no longer enough to protect against increasingly frequent and sophisticated attacks. Should perimeter security be breached, then a hacker can have unopposed access to privileged data from within the network.

With the rise in the number of devices that can access group networks, the use of VPN, Webmail, and cloud-based storage and software, defending a perimeter is more challenging, as arguably the perimeter becomes limitless. This change in the way we work has initiated a shift in thinking when it comes to digital security, from breach prevention to breach acceptance. This approach centres around data security, rather than perimeter security. It assumes a successful perimeter breach will occur, and utilises encryption to protect the data from inside the network.

Encryption is the baseline solution every company should employ, because when the perimeter security of a business is breached, the data will be unintelligible and worthless to the hackers without the corresponding encryption key.

When Talk Talk suffered their third cyber breach of 2015, millions of customers’ credit card and bank details were stolen. This is an example of why encryption is essential for protecting against an attack; if Talk Talk had encrypted their data, the company and its customers would have been safe.

America’s largest bank, JP Morgan Chase, experienced a cyber breach in June 2014 that went undetected until July 2014. By this time, the hackers had already accessed dozens of the bank’s servers, stealing names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of 76 million account holders.

This is where new defence technology, such as Darktrace, is stepping up. Darktrace utilises Enterprise Immune System technology, a new approach to cyber defence inspired by the human body’s ability to learn and recognise threats and anomalies. This model allows Darktrace to constantly learn an evolving pattern of what is normal for every network, device, and individual user, correlating this information in order to spot subtle deviations that indicate in-progress threats. It also provides instant visibility into all network activity. The ability to do this in real time minimises the risk of an attack going undetected, as experienced by JP Morgan Chase.

It is concerning that new research from SafeNet suggests 60 percent of organisations are not confident their data would be secure if a hacker got past their network’s perimeter security. While businesses shouldn’t take down their firewalls, as perimeter security still provides another layer of security against an attack, data security should be a priority for every organisation. Ensuring your data is encrypted could be the difference between a successful breach of data and a failed attack.

We understand it can feel daunting to try to manage data security on your own, which is why we are here to help. Get in touch either by completing the form, phoning 0844 586 0040 or emailing [email protected].