Enterprises have to improve their security posture and ensure compliance with data privacy legislation as part of their core mandate. The use of digital and cloud technologies continues to increase, creating a veritable vista of new challenges within the enterprise data landscape. Balancing the need for increased productivity and operational efficiency against security and data privacy challenges isn’t easy.
In 2021, data breaches increased by 17% and the primary targets were utilities and manufacturing companies. Enterprises must protect against many different attack vectors while circumventing the latest challenges related to data privacy and information security.
Biggest Challenges with Enterprise Data Privacy and Security in 2022
Enterprises aren’t taking the latest information security and data privacy challenges lightly. According to Proofpoint’s latest global survey, CISOs are more confident about their organization’s security posture compared to previous years. While this may be a case of false confidence, it does indicate that enterprises understand their risk landscape and know how vital it is to implement security controls to protect their IT environments.
Even with renewed awareness, enterprises list data privacy and security as a top challenge while governance and compliance are only slightly behind. With this in mind, let’s look at the top five challenges facing enterprises in their efforts to improve data privacy and security.
1. A Growing Skills Shortage
Even before the events of the last few years, the scarcity of security skills was evident in enterprises. With “The Great Resignation” now affecting enterprises around the globe, this challenge is not going away any time soon. The lack of skilled professionals and those who are eyeing other opportunities will be the biggest hurdle for enterprise data privacy and security over the next few years.
Managing digital and cloud infrastructure is a discipline that requires continued upskilling to keep up with the latest exploits and attack vectors. Considering that enterprises have to work within multiple cloud environments and across a variety of vendors, the skills shortage is the number one challenge you face today.
2. The Increased Cost of Compliance
Cloud environments easily transcend geographic borders that continue to increase the cost of compliance with industry standards and region-specific regulatory requirements. New legislation such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) opens up enterprises to liability if they do not follow the rules applicable to specific geographies.
In 2022, the biggest GDPR fine (so far) totaled €26.5 million, issued to Enel Energia for using personal data from customers unlawfully. While mega data breaches regularly cost more than this, it’s obvious that even without experiencing any unauthorized access to enterprise data, there are still compliance liabilities to consider.
3. An Uncertain Direction for Future Operations
Reactively implementing controls was a necessity for the last few years but now, there needs to be a clear direction for data privacy and security going forward. Technologies continue to evolve and CISOs have to set a clear strategy to reduce their attack surface and secure the entire enterprise data landscape.
Technology and vendor selection are at the heart of securing operations inside the enterprise. Each decision could unlock new opportunities but inadvertently also increase your risk profile. With SaaS and open source solutions becoming prevalent in enterprise IT environments, decision-makers have to ensure they have security controls like end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in place for all internal and external data exchanges.
4. Keeping Up with Rapid Growth
While growth is always good for the C-suite, keeping security and data privacy controls up to date in an expanding environment can challenge even hardened professionals. Budgets don’t always increase along with expanding operations, putting security teams who are already struggling under immense pressure.
The need to provision new systems quickly may lead to a tool sprawl where maintaining control at scale becomes a concern for CISOs. The solution to this challenge is developing an effective and consistent strategy for all data assets and digital operations that can adapt, scale, and evolve with the enterprise.
5. Maintaining Endpoint Security in Hybrid Work Environments
Remote work is now part of the fabric for enterprises that want to retain talent and remain productive. Securing each endpoint is vital to protecting the enterprise data landscape and policies like BYOD will only make it harder for security teams.
Once again, using E2EE is one of the best defenses against data theft, extraction, or surveillance. Wickr provides a secure communication and collaboration platform for enterprises that need to protect all data at rest and in transit. With CISOs facing a host of challenges today, knowing that all information exchanges and communications remain protected is one less concern you have to deal with every day.
Overcome Data Privacy and Security Concerns with Wickr
To stay ahead of the latest challenges facing enterprise data privacy and security, consider Wickr as your secure collaboration platform. Trusted by the military and government agencies, Wickr gives enterprises the ability to communicate securely from any location or device.
For enterprises that want to improve data privacy and security across all communications, talk to Wickr about our solutions today.