Is Your Data As Safe As You Think? More Than Meets The Eye In the Cyber World
By Mark R. Smith, Editor-in-ChiefOctober 1, 2013
Posted in: News
Consider the plight of a new company, particularly, how it handles its data. Fledgling companies often have very little value and may have to take significant risks, and outsource almost everything in the process, to get off the ground. These days, much of whatever data they have ends up in the cloud.
If all goes well, once they turn the corner and derive value, then the risk and value equations change — especially if the company’s value is in intellectual property, corporate trust or trade secrets.
This, in the eyes of some observers, should cause them to re-evaluate their risk posture and flee the cloud.
Similarly, consider the plight of established companies. Their management wants to cut costs, and they often believe they can do just that by abandoning inside information technology capability and outsourcing it. They also have to determine whether the money saved will make up for the reduced flexibility and increase in risk of moving to the cloud.
On a simpler level, due diligence is required to ensure that data entrusted to outsourced entities is properly protected. And that, according to one well-placed federal government source, is what too many companies are not doing.
That can lead to eye-opening discoveries at critical moments, which is important to note, as the federal government and the private sector are leaning, now more than ever, toward outsourcing needed services.
Still, others maintain that the same problem can arise if a company opts to manage its data in-house.
