The IT Nerd

Data Privacy Day, also known in Europe as Data Protection Day, is globally recognized each year on January 28th. Some have now even extended this to a weeklong celebration. The event’s purpose is to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices. 

Executives from Datadobi, DH2i, Folio Photonics, Nexsan, Nyriad, Hammerspace, Fortra and Retrospect had this to say about this very timely and important topic: 

Carl D’Halluin, CTO, Datadobi: 

“A staggering amount of unstructured data has been and continues to be created. In response, a variety of innovative new tools and techniques have been developed so that IT professionals can better get their arms around it. Savvy IT professionals know that effective and efficient management of unstructured data is critical in order to maximize revenue potential, control costs, and minimize risk across today’s heterogeneous, hybrid-cloud environments. However, savvy IT professionals also know this can be easier said than done, without the right unstructured data management solution(s) in place. And, on Data Privacy Day we are reminded that data privacy is among the many business-critical objectives being faced by those trying to rein-in their unstructured data. 

The ideal unstructured data management platform is one that enables companies to assess, organize, and act on their data, regardless of the platform or cloud environment in which it is being stored. From the second it is installed, users should be able to garner insights into their unstructured data. From there, users should be able to quickly and easily organize the data in a way that makes sense and to enable them to achieve their highest priorities, whether it is controlling costs, CO2, or risk – or ensuring end-to-end data privacy.”

​​Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i:

“The perpetual concern around data privacy and protection has led to an abundance of new and increasingly stringent regulations around the world. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 71% of countries now have data protection and privacy legislation, with another 9% having draft legislation. 

This increased scrutiny makes perfect sense. Data is being created and flowing not just from our business endeavors, but countless personal interactions we make every day – whether we are hosting an online conference, making an online purchase, or using a third party for ride-hailing, food delivery, or package transport. 

Today, as organizations endeavor to protect data – their own as well as their customers’ – many still face the hurdle of trying to do so with outdated technology that was simply not designed for the way we work and live today. Most notably, many organizations are relying on virtual private networks (VPNs) for network access and security. Unfortunately, both external and internal bad actors are now exploiting VPN’s inherent vulnerabilities. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Forward looking IT organizations have discovered the answer to the VPN dilemma. It is an innovative and highly reliable approach to networking connectivity – the Software Defined Perimeter (SDP). This approach enables organizations to build a secure software-defined perimeter and use Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) tunnels to seamlessly connect all applications, servers, IoT devices, and users behind any symmetric network address translation (NAT) to any full cone NAT: without having to reconfigure networks or set up complicated and problematic VPNs. With SDP, organizations can ensure safe, fast and easy network and data access; while ensuring they adhere to internal governance and external regulations compliance mandates.”

Steve Santamaria, CEO, Folio Photonics: 

“It is no secret that data is at the center of everything you do. Whether you are a business, a nonprofit, an educational institution, a government agency, or the military, it is vital to your everyday operations. It is therefore critical that the appropriate person(s) in your organization have access to the data they need anytime, anywhere, and under any conditions. However, it is of the equal importance that you keep it from falling in the wrong hands. 

Therefore, when managing current and archival data, a top concern must be data security and durability, not just today but for decades upon decades into the future. The ideal data storage solution must offer encryption and WORM (write-once, read-many) capabilities. It must require little power and minimal climate control. It should be impervious to EMPs, salt water, high temps, and altitudes. And, all archive solutions must have 100+ years of media life and be infinitely backward compatible, while still delivering a competitive TCO. But most importantly, the data storage must have the ability to be air-gapped as this is truly the only way to prevent unauthorized digital access.”

Surya Varanasi, CTO, Nexsan: 

“Digital technology has revolutionized virtually every aspect of our lives. Work, education, shopping, entertainment, and travel are just a handful of the areas that have been transformed. Consequently, today, our data is like gravity – it’s everywhere. 

On Data Privacy Day, we are reminded of this fact, and the need to ensure our data’s safety and security. Fortunately, there are laws and regulations that help to take some of the burden off of our shoulders; such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

However, some of the responsibility remains on our shoulders as well as those of the data management professionals we rely upon. Today, it would be extremely challenging to find an organization (or an individual for that matter) that isn’t backing up their data. Unfortunately however, today that just isn’t enough. Cyber criminals have become increasingly aggressive and sophisticated, along with their ransomware and other malware. And now, the threat isn’t just that they will hold your data until payment, cyber criminals are now threatening to make personal and confidential data public, if not paid. It is therefore critical that cyber hygiene must include protecting backed up data by making it immutable and by eliminating any way that data can be deleted or corrupted. 

This can be accomplished with an advanced Unbreakable Backup solution, which creates an immutable, object-locked format, and then takes it a step further by storing the admin keys in another location entirely for added protection. With an Unbreakable Backup solution that encompasses these capabilities, users can ease their worry about the protection and privacy of their data, and instead focus their expertise on activities that more directly impact the organization’s bottom-line objectives.”

Andrew Russell, Chief Revenue Officer, Nyriad: 

“Data Privacy Day serves as a great reminder of the value and power of data. In addition to your people, data is without question the most strategic asset of virtually any organization. Data and the ability to fully leverage, manage, store, share, and protect it, enables organizations to be successful across virtually every facet – from competitive advantage, to innovation, the employee experience, and customer satisfaction, to legal and regulations compliance competency. 

Consequently, savvy data management professionals recognize that while a storage solution that is able to deliver unprecedented performance, resiliency, and efficiency with a low total cost of ownership is priority number one to fully optimize data and intelligence for business success; they likewise need to ensure they have the ability to protect against, detect, and restore data and operations in the event of a successful cyber-attack in order to protect their data, for business survival.” 

Brian Dunagan, Vice President of Engineering, Retrospect: 

“Every organization, regardless of size, faces the real possibility that they could be the next victim of a cyberattack. That is because today’s ransomware, which is easier than ever for even the novice cybercriminal to obtain via ransomware as a service (RaaS), strikes repeatedly and randomly without even knowing whose system it is attacking. Ransomware now simply searches for that one crack, that one vulnerability, that will allow it entry to your network. Once inside it can lock-down, delete, and/or abscond with your data and demand payment should you wish to keep your data private and/or have it returned. 

As an IT professional, it is therefore critical that beyond protection, steps be taken to detect ransomware as early as possible to stop the threat and ensure their ability to remediate and recover. A backup solution that includes anomaly detection to identify changes in an environment that warrants the attention of IT is a must. In order to ensure its benefit,, users must be able to tailor the backup solution’s anomaly detection to their business’s specific systems and workflows; with capabilities such as customizable filtering and thresholds for each of their backup policies. And, those anomalies must be immediately reported to management, as well as aggregated for future ML/analyzing purposes.”

Molly Presley, SVP of Marketing at Hammerspace:  

“With global rules governing how data should be stored, used, and shared, combined with escalating data losses, explosive personal data growth, and customer expectations, addressing data privacy is now an obligatory business requirement. However, as organizations expand and navigate compliance and legal requirements in the rapidly evolving age of big data, AI/ML, and government regulations, the existing processes surrounding data privacy need to evolve to 1) automate processes and 2) scale to meet increasingly complex new challenges.   

Privacy and security concerns increasingly impact multiple vertical markets, including finance, government, healthcare and life sciences, telecommunications, IT, online retail, and others, as they quickly outgrow legacy data storage architectures. As a result, there is increasing pressure to develop and implement a data strategy and architecture for decentralized data that is more cohesive, making access to critical information simplified and secure.

To protect the organizations’ and individual users’ sensitive data, organizations must take the steps necessary to control how data is shared and eliminate the proliferation of data copies outside the controls of IT security systems. Accelerating IT modernization efforts while managing the ever-increasing volumes of data requires a data solution that simplifies, automates, and secures access to global data. Most importantly, to ensure data privacy and secure data collaboration, a data solution must be able to put data to use across multiple locations and to multiple users while simplifying IT Operations by automating data protection and data management to meet policies set by administrators.”

Jason Lohrey, CEO of Arcitecta:   

“In this information age, data is the critical element of transformation, serving as a foundation for strategic decision-making. Data Privacy Day reminds us that data influences everything we do, from building services, products, customer experiences, and employee relationships. With the acceleration of technology, we are more connected than ever before and using data to facilitate high-value achievements for businesses and consumers.  

But with new threats, it is now more imperative than ever to protect data from those who seek to gain an advantage by exploiting others. It is becoming increasingly easier to infiltrate systems around the world. Organizations need to increase the resilience of their data so that it remains continuously available, and IT leaders must shift their focus from successful backups to successful recoveries to ensure that valuable data doesn’t become compromised by landing in the wrong hands.”  

Nick Hogg, Director of Technical Training at Fortra:

“With the rise of remote working, sharing sensitive files is now taken for granted. Therefore, awareness days and weeks, like Data Privacy Week, are a great way to remind organizations and their stakeholders of the importance of storing and handling data properly.

It’s essential for organizations to re-evaluate their security awareness and compliance training programs to move away from the traditional once-a-year, ‘box-ticking’ exercises that have proven to be less effective. The goal is to deliver ongoing training that keeps data security and compliance concerns front and center in employees’ minds, allowing them to better identify phishing and ransomware risks, as well as reducing user error when handling sensitive data.

They will also need to use digital transformation and ongoing cloud migration initiatives to re-evaluate their existing data loss prevention and compliance policies. The goal is to ensure stronger protection of their sensitive data and meet compliance requirements, while replacing complex infrastructure and policies to reduce the management overhead and interruptions to legitimate business processes.”

Wade Barisoff, Director of Product, Data Protection at Fortra (on the recent introduction of new privacy laws in the states of California and Virginia):

“As new states contemplate their own flavors of data privacy legislation, the only consistency will be the fact that each new law is different. We are already seeing this now; for example, in California, residents can sue companies for data violations, whereas in others it’s their attorney general’s offices that can impose the fines. In Utah, standards apply to fewer businesses compared to other states. As each state seeks to highlight how much they value their citizens’ rights over the next, we’ll see an element of (for example), ‘What’s good for California isn’t good enough for Kansas’ creep in, and this developing complexity will have a significant impact on organizations operating across the country.

Before GDPR there were (and still are) many different country laws for data privacy. GDPR was significant, not because it was a unifying act that enshrined the rights of people and their digital identities to govern how their data could be handled, but it was the first legislation with real teeth. Fines for non-compliance were enough to force companies into action.

So far, five states have (or will have) individual laws, but there are 45 more yet to come. The amount of money and time companies will spend enacting the proper controls for these individual privacy laws fuels the argument for a more unified national approach to data privacy standards, as the penalties for non-compliance are significant. Also, as states begin to increase the demands on business, usually without fully understanding the technology landscape and how businesses work with shared and cloud-based technologies, there’s a potential that companies will be forced to make the decision not to conduct business in certain areas. A national approach would allow businesses to tackle data privacy once, but as it stands, with the federated states model, doing business within the U.S. is likely to get more complicated and expensive.”