Third-party data sharing, a word that has acquired the attention of security experts, users, and every business. If a business wants to protect the data shared by the third party, it needs to know everything about the data. What data is being shared? Is the third-party again sharing the data? What is being transcended by the shared data?
Governments are implementing new regulations to protect the citizen’s data; GDPR and CCPA are just the first steps to regulate the sensitive user data. Regulations are the first step to protect data in the coming years; the government and regulator interference might cripple business innovation.
Businesses need to implement steps to protect their data and data workflows ultimately. Encrypted data packets and IP addresses will be given a certain part of the story, but with metadata, a business will be equipped to protect the data. Metadata brings protection to different types of data PII, IP, and PHI that can be shared with trusted third-party users.
Third-party workflow threats have a common theme—a user is an actor while the file is an agent. For complete protection, the business needs to analyze the complete span of every associated breath, with a focus on files entering and exiting your organization. With added secured solutions will include defense entailing securing, monitoring, and managing all the third-party workflows that include secure email, SFTP, and secure file sharing, among others.
Every business might be sharing different types of content, to make businesses aware of the Data Leak Protection (DLP) technology that can be deployed to deny every type of unauthorized access. A complete context-aware and content-aware security can only be applied to workflows to improve the experience for users, files, and applications. A business needs to screen various types of data, both sensitive and others at the user-application-file level. In case of a failure, businesses must be protected using log file metadata and DLP results to analyze them.
Data protection can be a challenge for any business, but using tools and following a specific strategy will protect sensitive data from all (internal and external) threats. The focus on data and protection will widely vary based on each industry and regulations of the land.