Every country invests a lot in its border security. Why? - To secure their country from malicious intent, terrorism activity, and core security. Just like this, databases also need to be secured - from cyberattacks, malware, and data leaks.
Data is a valuable resource that needs to be handled and managed with the same care as any other economic resource. So, some or all of the commercial data may be tactically significant to the respective organization and must be kept private and secure.
What Is Database Security?
A database security system is a collection of different precautions businesses like yours take to guarantee their databases are safe from both internal and external threats. The numerous applications that access it, the database management system, and the data it holds are all covered by database security. Databases must be protected by organizations against intentional attacks, such as cybersecurity risks, as well as from users who have access to the databases misusing the data and databases.
Data breaches have become more frequent during the past few years. In addition to the significant harm these risks do to a business's brand and client base, enterprises are being forced to comply with an increasing number of laws and fines for data breaches, as those in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), some of which are quite expensive. Maintaining compliance, safeguarding your reputation, and retaining customers all depend on having an effective database security system.
Understanding Data Security And GDPR
Applications can use the methods of data masking, data subsetting, and data redaction to lessen the exposure of sensitive data. These technologies are essential for meeting the standards for anonymization and pseudonymization set forth by laws like the EU GDPR.
Established and widely acknowledged privacy principles, such as purpose limitation, lawfulness, transparency, integrity, and secrecy, served as the foundation for the European Union GDPR. It improves already-existing privacy and security obligations, such as those for notice and permission, technical and practical security safeguards, and systems for cross-border data movement. The GDPR also formalizes new privacy principles including responsibility and data minimization in order to adapt to the new digital, global, and data-driven economy.
Data breaches are subject to fines of up to 4% of a company's global annual sales or €20 million, whichever is greater, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Businesses handling data collection in the EU will need to manage their data handling methods, taking into account the following requirements:
Data Security
To prevent data loss, information leaks, and other illegal data processing activities, businesses must have a suitable level of security that includes both technical and organizational security controls. Including encryption, incident management, and standards for network and system integrity, availability, and resilience in a company's security program is encouraged by the GDPR.
Extended rights of individuals
As a result, people have more ownership and control over their own data. A wider range of data protection rights is also available to them, such as the right to data portability and the right to be forgotten.
Data breach notification
When a company learns that a data breach has occurred and that personal information has been exposed, it must immediately notify the relevant authorities and/or the affected persons.
Security audits
Businesses will be required to record and keep track of their security procedures, audit the efficiency of their security program, and implement corrective action as needed.
Understanding Data Security and HIPPA
The increased usage and exchange of electronic patient data have increased the requirement for data security. Healthcare businesses must now address this increased demand for data while adhering to HIPAA rules and safeguarding patient healthcare information in order to provide high-quality care.
Any business dealing with Protected Health Information (PHI), whether you are a Covered Entity (CE) or a Business Affiliate (BA), should have all the security measures - Physical, Network, and Procedures - to ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations. When a phishing attempt resulted in the compromising of 3200 patients' data, a public health clinic in Denver was forced to pay a $400,000 HIPAA breach penalty. A compliance program that also incorporates cyber security awareness training for staff members might have easily prevented this.
HIPAA infractions cost money. Based on the degree of negligence, the fines for noncompliance can range from $100 to $50,000 per infraction (or each record), with a maximum fine of $1.5 million per year for infractions of the same provision. Criminal charges for violations may also lead to jail time.
The number of patients and degree of carelessness will affect how much the fines rise. The lowest penalties begin with a breach where you weren't aware of the violation and, with due diligence, would not have been. Fines are assessed at the other end of the spectrum when a violation results from negligence and is not remedied within 30 days. This is known as mens rea in legalese (state of mind). Hence, the severity of fines increases from no mens rea (didn't know) to inferred mens rea (willful neglect).
Reasonable Cause and Willful Neglect are the two main categories into which the fines and charges are divided. Reasonable Cause does not require any jail penalty and can range from $100 to $50,000 per incident. Criminal charges for willful neglect can vary from $10,000 to $50,000 for each instance.
Database Security Solutions
Data security best practices, including encryption, key management, data masking, privileged user access limits, activity monitoring, and audits, can lower the risk of a data breach and make compliance easier.
Data protection: Solutions that suit a variety of use cases, including encryption, key management, redaction, and masking, can lower the risk of a data breach and non-compliance.
Data access control: Validating a user's identity when they access a database (authentication) and limiting the actions they can take are essential components of safeguarding a database system (authorization). Data is protected from hackers with the aid of strong authentication and permission mechanisms. Furthermore, ensuring the separation of roles helps prevent privileged individuals from abusing their access to sensitive data and also helps stop malicious or unintentional database changes.
Auditing and monitoring: For auditing purposes, every database activity should be documented. This includes activity that occurs over networks as well as behavior that is initiated within databases (usually by direct login), which obviates any network monitoring. Even if the network is encrypted, auditing should still function. Databases must offer robust and thorough auditing, including facts about the data, the client making the request, the operation's specifics, and the SQL statement itself.
Securing databases in the cloud: Cloud database installations can lower expenses, free up people for more crucial tasks, and support an IT organization that is more responsive and flexible. But, these advantages may also come with extra concerns, such as a shared infrastructure, a wider threat surface, and an unknowable administration group. Yet, the cloud can offer greater security than what the majority of enterprises have on-premises while also lowering costs and enhancing agility if the right database security best practices are used.
One of the most pressing issues in the modern data management landscape is database security. By utilizing many of the above-mentioned strategies, you can lessen the numerous, developing threats to database security. Even complete solutions that incorporate many of these methods to strengthen database security are available.
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