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More and more information is being stored in the cloud, and the number of personal cloud users is on the rise with no signs of slowing down. Social media sites such as Facebook in the U.S. and Sina Webo in China are sites where everyone meets and where data is being stored permanently. Today, we seldom exchange photos via email or carry USB sticks for storing documents. Instead, we trust the cloud as our preferred place to meet and exchange information.
So how can we be sure the data and information we’re storing in the cloud is safe and secure? The short answer is that we cannot. At West, we have stepped up our data privacy initiatives to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that our information assets are secure. As part of our ongoing communication and awareness training on information security, we discourage storing sensitive information – financial, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information – in the cloud. That can be easier said than done, so keep critical information out of the cloud and on more appropriate storage solutions.
At West, we also encourage using strong passwords. While that advice may be overused, most people don’t follow it. According to Information Security Magazine, most passwords can be cracked within seconds. Most accounts are broken into because they have easy-to-use-and-remember passwords. Re-using passwords for multiple services (email and cloud storage accounts for example) can be an easy way for hackers to get personally identifiable information on you. So use strong passwords – the longer the better – and add numbers and special characters to make them harder to crack.
To date, encryption is still the best way to protect any type of data. Encryption software (some tools are free) is used to create a password for the file. Then the password-protected file is moved to the cloud. No one can open the file or see the content without knowing the password. There are also some cloud services that provide encryption and decryption of files in addition to storage, so you get the added benefit of security and backup of data. This increases the odds that no one will have access to your files, although it also means that even an IT administrator may not be able to recover your data. This is referred to as “zero-knowledge” privacy.
When making decisions on the best way to protect information, keep in mind how valuable that information would be if it were lost or compromised. Classify the level of data privacy you need for your data and then the level of protection for it. While not everyone may be ready to pay for it, if you use the cloud to store valuable information or corporate data, the price for safely securing that data is fairly reasonable and will allow you to weather any storm.
Beyond the challenges of ensuring that data privacy laws are observed across the globe, West IT is faced with the need to safeguard intellectual property, trade secrets, and confidential company and employee data while ensuring that we can serve our global customers. This is becoming increasingly more complex with the rapid advances in mobility and cloud computing. At West, IT is evaluating the best way to enable our employees to take advantage of these rapid advances in technology while still ensuring protection for confidential company information.
Over the past several decades, IT has moved from a data-center model, where most information and data was inside the enterprise, to the Internet, where there’s more information outside the four walls of the enterprise than within it. More recently, the pervasiveness of mobility, social media, and bring your own device (BYOD) and cloud (BYOC) are bringing about both technical and cultural changes that are profoundly changing enterprise IT and computing.
Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are transforming the way we communicate and collaborate like never before. The convenience, ease of use, technical capabilities and mind-boggling array of apps have been pivotal to increasing productivity and customer and employee engagement. Yet mobility comes with some caveats, such as the need to secure confidential customer and financial data. This challenge has gained prominence this year due, in part, to the headline-grabbing news of hackers across the globe breaking into supposedly secure corporate and government databases.
<span style="color: #333333;">Today, we are more connected than ever before. We rely on the Internet to stay informed and to perform our day-to-day jobs. It’s hard to imagine our lives without the Internet; yet for all of its advantages, increased connectivity brings increased risks for cybercrime. Recognizing the importance of cyber security, President Obama designated October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), as has the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). At West, we are committed to ensuring the ongoing success of our business processes and operations, which requires information that is accurate, complete, consistent and, above all, secure. This makes cyber security one of West’s most important priorities.</span>
With the explosive growth in social media, mobile devices, cloud computing and access to data both internal and external to West (now referred to as Big Data), West IT has been working to ensure that we are able to leverage these transformational trends. In 2012, we updated our IT strategy to allow us to be part of the revolution while making it feel more like an evolution. The initial phase began with investments in cloud technologies – both private and public – to drive down IT operating costs and to enable us to take advantage of software enhancements made by our strategic partners.
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