Data Security And Compliance How Far Would You Go?

How should companies go about ensuring that their compliance set-up and security are adequate as far as their own and customers’ confidential and business data and involvement of third parties is concerned.

- Anupam Sharan

Cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment. The same is true for custom software, which is increasingly being designed for some variation of public or private cloud.

Are you aware that 90% of top companies face or have faced data theft in some way or the other and that also involves public sector and defense set-ups. To add to the figures, at least 75% of small and medium-sized companies know that their confidential data is at risk. However, do they have proper measures to control it? The other factor is almost 92% of the companies are involved with cloud and almost all data is stored as SaaS (Software as a Service) wherein companies are finding it difficult to manage the contractual risk involved? How has the practice changed in industries over the past decade or so? Advances in technology mean that data can be transferred quickly and stored indefinitely, including potential third parties accessing your system. The whole digitalization, in addition to bringing business efficiencies and convenience for users, however, changes to global data flows have also elevated the risks to privacy and confidentiality. The cost to the company can be enormous for such data theft going into millions of $s and then the penalties associated for non-compliance, including those of the regulators.

Cyber security, IP theft, breaches of network and computers, are huge concerns of all companies. There are two kinds of companies; ones that have had a cyber security problem and ones that have a problem but don’t know of its existence. The cost to company can be enormous - the study done by PWC, the order of millions as cost to company due to cyber theft.