Archiving and Cyber Security

Much like some organizations found themselves unprepared for massive amount of data coming from the business use of social media in recent years, a wave of security fatigue is already emerging for many managers responsible for protecting operational data. The onslaught of news covering cyber security attacks and data breaches are daily. Paired with an always on stream of doom-sayers, organizations are challenged to stay current and ever feel that they are addressing their cyber security risk.

To set your perspective, let us agree that nothing can be made “un-hackable”. Assuming that means we need to determine what are the steps we can take to shore up our defenses to reduce the risk of compromise in our organizations. One area beyond the firewalls and gateways is operational data. This data is, at the core, the electronic bits and bytes that make up nearly all of doing business day to day from an information point of view.

This includes:

• Messaging, from email to social media, websites as well as text messages,
• files ranging from reports, correspondence, contracts and other documents,
• images, video and audio and other more dynamic data, and
• meta data, such as dates and times and related information that helps define this data.

Where will we find the largest store of this data? Primarily in your archiving and governance platform(s).

While these data can be spread across multiple online and offline locations, the email inbox remains one of the core destinations where all of these data converge. Likewise, that now means it also syncs beyond the organizational computer to tablets and smart phones (and various cloud backup platforms).

While this may make you even more queasy, consider that if more than 100 billion business emails* are being sent per day, the optimal place to insure a secure, accessible archive and backup is your email archiving solution.

This means:

• Your core operational data is secured in an off-site backup (beyond compromise if your primary network is breached)
• This data includes communications (email, social, web and text) and the subsequent standard and dynamic attachments of files, audio and video already
• This data store is easily searched and reported on, with support for not only standard governance needs but also supporting regulatory and other legal elements, for compliance and/or litigation.

By considering your governance and archiving platform(s) as elements of your overall cyber security risk planning – you can balance the resources you need to secure your operational data with strong partners whose sole focus is providing strong, scalable solutions for these needs.

To learn more about how archiving is as key to cyber security as it is compliance, contact us.

*Radicati Group: Email 2015-2019: http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf