Within a typical enterprise, data streams across multiple geographic locations, offices, and business groups. It spans various networks, systems, and applications, from legacy software to multi-cloud environments that combine vendors and programming languages.
Cloud-centric organizations, especially, face steep challenges. Clouds can’t replace all legacy systems or remove the need for data warehouses and even data centers. They simply add another layer to the enterprise data framework.
In these environments, as in many others, businesses must adopt a data-management framework that’s built for digital transactions and interactions. Some call it “privacy by design.” It’s no secret that data security is only as strong as its weakest link. As data migrations and multi-cloud environments become the new normal, it’s critically important to simplify the vast array of processes, oversight, and controls through a centralized view and comprehensive controls.
One best-practice approach to data security requires a clear strategy and the right technology. It demands a vendor-neutral, enterprise-wide security policy with a solution that extends across different technologies, databases, clouds providers, and tools. And while clouds won’t kill the datacenter, an enterprise must be equipped to handle the challenges of managing and moving data in and out of clouds, including through container platforms. Ideally, a solution is available as a container so that it can be easily deployed, moved, and adapted as needed.
MAXIMUM DATA PROTECTION
This approach leads to a privacy-by-design framework that stresses maximum data protection, strong regulatory compliance, high performance, and scalability. It also simplifies inherently difficult security tasks, such as masking data elements but ensuring their usability.
As organizations pursue rapid innovation that centers on agility, flexibility, and DevOps—typically through multi-cloud environments and a growing array of IoT data—this approach delivers highly automated controls over data from top to bottom and across an enterprise. It also extends outward across business partners and customers, while tackling key regulatory and compliance concerns.
With a “single plane of glass” platform in place—something that 66 percent of advanced cloud businesses deem important, according to IBM—it’s possible to gain full visibility and control over the sum of clouds, legacy databases, clusters, and other data sources. An enterprise can establish unified controls that span vendors, hardware systems, products, and data formats. This environment supports ongoing changes to an IT framework without disrupting data flow and, ultimately, innovation.
In the end, a privacy-by-design framework delivers the flexibility to quickly add or change clouds, add IoT devices, harness APIs, and migrate data, containers, and other elements—without introducing gaps and exposure points. It’s a platform designed and built for today’s demanding digital business requirements, but it’s also equipped for future growth and ongoing changes, in whatever form they take. Privacy-by-design is a model for today’s borderless business world. It puts innovation and disruption in the spotlight.