Important Information You Need To Know About GDPR

What is GDPR and how did it come about?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation that was enacted by the Council of European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament with the aim of strengthening personal data protection for people living with the EU. It is an upgrade of the 1998 Data Protection Act and seeks to address new ways of exploiting people’s data as introduced by the cloud and internet technology. For instance, your name, credit card number, address and phone number are collected, analysed and stored by organizations such as ,banks, governments, social media companies and retailers. Therefore, the GDPR was enacted to give people more control over their personal data. The European Union hopes to build trust in the growing digital economy by strengthening data protection and privacy legislation and enforcing tough compliance measures. Additionally, the EU seeks to provide businesses with a clear and simple legal operating environment by using this legal framework.

What is GDPR compliance?

Data breaches occur daily; information gets stolen, lost or risks being used maliciously in the wrong hands. Under the GDPR, organizations are required to gather personal data under strict and legal conditions. Moreover, those who collect and manage the data are tasked to protect it from exploitation and misuse while respecting the rights and wishes of data owners to avoid facing hefty penalties.

Under the current data protection act, personal data includes, photos, address, and name. The GDPR expanded personal data definition to include biometric data, genetic data and IP addresses that can be processed to distinctively identify a person. The GDPR Compliance Services will take effect in all EU member state on May 25, 2018.

What does GDPR mean for businesses and consumers?

The GDPR applies to companies conducting business activities with Europeans whether they are based within the EU region or not. The regulation recommends that privacy controls and data protection safeguards should be built into products and services at their initial development stages. Also, businesses are encouraged to utilize techniques like pseudonymmization to protect their customers’ privacy.

For consumers, the GDPR gives them the right to know when their personal data such as, social security number, health records, and email addresses have been hacked or exposed on the internet without their consent. Organizations will be required to notifying the relevant national bodies immediately any data is hacked to ensure that the affected citizens take preventive measures to protect their personal information. Organizations are also required to detail how they use consumers’ data in a simple and comprehendible manner.

Summary

Companies must implement the right organizational and technical measures as per the GDPR provisions that advocate for governance and accountability. These measures include, but are not limited to documenting processed activities and data protection provisions, conducting internal audits, reviewing organization’s privacy and security policies and ensure staff training on security and privacy.

Cyber Intelligence and Analytics – The Next Frontier to Cyber Security

Cybersecurity is the hot topic and the point of concern evolving in the digital universe. There is an ongoing clash between the data owner on one side and the energies devoted to destroy or gain unauthorized access to the data on the other side. Managing the technology research  is an on-going task and it is important to stay informed of the threats to your IT assets.

Cyberspace will be an area of extreme dynamic competition in the coming years where a wide range of actors, from individual hackers to criminals to legitimate companies to states, will exploit vulnerabilities in the security. Thus, businesses or enterprises require expertise across a wide range of disciplines, intelligence and slaw enforcement services, and data and network mapping. Cyber threat intelligence and analytics solutions will act against cyber adversary tactics and procedures.

Why is it important to develop cyber intelligence and analytics skills?

Cyber threats are growing and the future looks full of complex cyber challenges for enterprises. Organizations are therefore turning to analytics and automation to aid cyber specialists in their work. While cyber attacks can be the challenging field, but incorporating analytical techniques will rescue the enterprises of the cyber attacks. The approach and skill set should not be limited to detecting present threats, but to prevent the new types of attacks.

Critical Role of Visualization in Cyber Analysis

Cyberspace is intangible in nature and it has created significant challenges for analysts attempting to envision the environment. It prevents the formulation of intelligent decisions based on the environment’s data. The analysis of the complex attacks requires exploratory visualizations which empower analysts to investigate the unknown threats without compromising of situational awareness.

The effective visualization will enhance the analysts’ ability to perceive the data as part of the exploration process. The visualization should reach across multiple disciplines seamlessly and it will help analysts stay focused on the intended analytic path without any compromise on the context of analysis. Thus, it is important to take assistance from cyber intelligence experts for innovative solutions that will defend the organization’s vital systems.

Professional cybersecurity analysts will deliver the following values –

• Field-driven practical approach towards a methodological program”
• Risk-based holistic approach using various tools and techniques”
• Security Log and Event Management Services using different solutions”
• Data Leakage Protection Program Implementation Services”
• No major impact on network performance”

Analytics for Cyber Decision Making

There is a revolution in connected devices driven by the combination of mobility, cloud, and internet. It is becoming harder to detect internal threats as the traditional security platforms and products are unable to track or analyze the user behavior. Analytics for cyber decision making is leveraging Machine learning, Big Data, Trend Analysis, User Behavioral analysis,  and other techniques for identifying anomalous behavior, activities or trends of system or applications in an enterprise.

The Cyber Analytics platform is vital to help enterprises address the present challenges with traditional security infrastructure. It will help responding to new age IT security requirements in a much more efficient manner.

Cyber Security Assessment Secures The Organizational Data Against Complex Cyber Attacks

The world is connected today in the way like never before where organizations are more reliant on their IT systems to run their major operations. Organizations are just one data breach away today from being a leading story on the news, which can severely damage the reputation of any brand. That’s why businesses need to start thinking about performing an annual cyber security assessment, just like an annual financial audit. Any fancy or expensive security product doesn’t guarantee you the full security and often companies end up in tons of investment with no perfect ground result.

Periodic Cyber Security Audits are Crucial to Data Protection

Cybersecurity cannot be obscure, but many enterprises put some sort of cyber defense in place and forget about it. There is always a blind spot in such cases that causes overlooking of the important stuff. There will be changes in the IT setups and digital resources over time in an organization as developments boost the productivity. But it also opens up the door to complex risks and cyber crimes at the same time.

One can also view change in the awareness of some section of the enterprises as they carry out periodic cybersecurity assessment. All organizations hold some sort of sensitive data which remain under threat for a long duration. Proper assessment identifies the security loopholes, mitigate the risks, and put precautionary measures in place. There are organizations which are legally bound to periodic cyber security assessment.

Real-Time Response to Suspicious Privileged User Activity

The frequency of attacks is increasing and so does the sophistication of the attacks. Increasingly successful in their attempts, attackers seek privileged accounts to achieve their mission. Privileged accounts grant access to highly sensitivity resources as they proliferate throughout an organization’s IT environment. This is paving the path of successful cyber attacks. Security Assessment Services will quickly investigate the critical threats and stop attackers in their tracks.

The cybersecurity analysts focus their efforts and resources on the highest priority targets for the identification of significant risks. Security teams seek solutions that provide context and enriched insight, as well as the tools needed to investigate, contain and remediate incidents. An experienced cyber security enterprise will provide privileged credential protection, session security, least privilege and application control.

How to manage the cybersecurity risks?

The cybersecurity basics need to be in order to keep the attackers at bay and a quick assessment of the security framework will provide a detailed report of the possible mishaps. Cybersecurity is not solely a digital problem; it is a multi-layer challenge. There needs to be a risk-based management approach that implements an all-inclusive strategy to avoid and lessen risks posed by cyber threats. A report is drawn up on the status of IT security after the cybersecurity assessment.

The enterprise providing security assessment service will also be able to help organizations migrate to the cloud in a risk-free environment. The findings of cyber security assessment are the key inputs of a security project plan and provide the highest RIO.