On a personal level, most people want their personal data to be safe when it’s in the hands of a company. This concern extends to the corporate level, where data security is essential to keep customers happy and establishing trust with employees and other stakeholders.

Data security is the protection of digital data from corruption, damage and theft throughout its entire life-cycle. Data safety includes everything from storage devices, hardware devices as well as software and user devices to access control and control of access. It also involves ensuring policies and procedures are in place to prevent data breaches.

Data safety is primarily achieved through encryption, data masking and resilience. The encryption of sensitive information is essential at all stages, including storage, transport and use. It makes the data unreadable to unauthorized parties. Data masking is a method of replacing sensitive digital information with fake data for purposes like Business management tool database administration research and development software testing and training of users.

Resiliency is about having backups of vital data that can be quickly restored in the event of an incident. It also requires the removal of physical storage media like USBs and external drives (and even printed documents and files) regularly to ensure that the data is not discovered by hackers.

Security of data is a top concern for companies due to the fact that the consequences of a major data breach could cost them millions in cost of recovery and forensic expenses. It can also lead to fines for compliance, and can cause lasting damage to their reputation and customer loyalty. It’s also a legal requirement in that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act require organizations to protect personal information.