Access Management and security Strategies

You rely on the data warehouse for business-critical reporting and analysis. The warehouse has become the workforce engine powering business decisions and driving results. It is a central repository created by integrating data from one or more disparate sources such as applications, databases and legacy systems, a task becoming increasingly challenging with 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being created each day. Data warehouses store current as well as historical data and are used to satisfy business queries of all kinds.

Analytics without security is an accident waiting to happen - What’s at stake?

As you evaluate your data warehouse strategy, do not neglect data security or your reputation is devastated. With the average cost of security-related incidents in the era of big data estimated to be over USD40 million, you cannot afford to ignore data security as a top requirement. Not only do data breaches cost money, they can also negatively impact an organization’s brand, driving down stock prices and causing irreparable brand damage. In fact, a survey titled "Business case for data protection" asked the question “what are organizations’ goals that are dependent upon good data protection efforts.” In the past few years, preserving customer trust has moved into one of the top reasons listed. More and more customers are expecting companies to safeguard their information. The cost of losing customer’s trust could be devastating.

The black market for sensitive data is hot. Currently, cybercrime is a USD388 billion business—USD100 billion more than the black market for the world’s illegal drugs. Identity theft is at a three-year high, affecting 12.6 million US consumers and costing more than USD21 billion each year. Ninety percent of sensitive data theft is from servers. Why? This is because most sensitive data are stored in servers. As the famous bank robber Willie Sutton once said “Why do I rob banks? Because that is where the money is!”

As you aggregate data into the warehouse, ask these questions:

• Could some of this data be sensitive?
• Do you have controls over whom or what is accessing this data?
• Do you know which data could fall under the scrutiny of an auditor?
• Have any of your competitive peers been hit with a data breach or large audit fine?
• What is your strategy for managing new risks and threats to the warehouse?

Now is the time to understand sensitive data and establish business-driven protection policies to keep data safe. You will want to continuously monitor and audit data activity as well as de-indentify, through either making or encryption, the data as it moves into or out of the data warehouse. In addition, policies need to keep up with the velocity of data—even one minute is too late.