Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

When we think of NGOs we usually think of organizations that take action regarding children, diseases, education, or poverty, but most of the time we don't think of privacy. In fact, there are tons of non-governmental organizations working hard to protect everyone's basic right to privacy. Many people are out there right now dedicating their daily lives to safeguarding our freedom and privacy in the digital era. Supporting them is more important than you can imagine.

Having multiple environments that can be dynamically configured has become akin to modern software development. This is especially true in an enterprise context where the software release cycles typically consist of separate compute environments like dev, stage and production. These environments are usually distinguished by data that drives the specific behavior of the application.

We now have ever-expanding digital identities to live our daily lives and, whether it’s crossing international borders or more innocuously buying basic products and services, our digital footprint is growing. With the increasing requirement to have a digital identity to do just about anything, our data is constantly being shared online. That said, the demands on FinTech companies to keep personally identifiable information (PII) safe are more pressing than ever.

Within an organization, the Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC) teams need to work together to maintain optimal network performance in addition to ensuring both overall security and the availability of IT services for business lines. In the past, these two teams were focused on two separate objectives, using different tools to do so and often running specific processes.

Let’s face it—the harsh reality, seen often in news stories today, is that security breaches are going to happen. In today’s world of cybercriminals and nation-state attackers, it’s not a question of “if” but “when” your organization is attacked. If you don’t take appropriate steps to ensure sensitive data is protected properly, it could devastate the organization financially.

The HIPAA Journal reported that “2020 was the worst ever year for healthcare industry data breaches.” In the US alone, there were 642 reported data breaches in which the number of records stolen exceeded 500, and in total, nearly 29.3 million healthcare records were exposed.

Telemedicine or mobile healthcare apps are unquestionably important in our daily lives, as the world is increasingly shifting to an all-digital landscape. And when you think of the current pandemic scenario when social distancing and wearing masks are the new normal, nothing seems to be safer than using mobile health apps. But are we really safe while using these apps? Well, that brings us to the concern of being safe on the internet while using mobile healthcare apps.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. More than ever, now is the time for organizations to prioritize data security. This week we look at some data security trends that are shaping the industry today. Illustration by Balaji KR A recent study conducted by RiskBased Security has labeled 2020 the worst year for data security with a shocking 36 billion records compromised, twice the number from 2019.