Emphasizing Comprehensive Data Security: The Imperative of Scanning Every Hard Drive
In today's digital age, the protection of sensitive, unstructured data remains a paramount concern for businesses across the globe. This data, indifferent to its residing environment, becomes a prime target for cybercriminals and insider threats alike. Traditionally, organizational data security efforts have been predominantly focused on prominent network-attached storage solutions, such as filer servers or document management systems, including SharePoint. However, this approach often overlooks potential vulnerabilities present in desktops, laptops, print servers, and even essential Windows application servers. It's in these overlooked nooks and crannies that the most sensitive and crucial data might reside. Recognizing the comprehensive scope of these threats, we at SPHERE advocate for a rigorous "scan every hard drive" methodology.
The Fallacy of Overlooking Smaller Devices
The notion that only large storage devices or network-attached systems house critical data is a dangerous oversight. In reality, a mere Excel file or PDF, compact in size yet containing thousands of customers' social security numbers, could reside unnoticed on application servers. The minimal storage capacity of these servers does not equate to a lower security risk. On the contrary, our experiences reveal that developers can, and do, find ingenious ways to bypass security protocols, leaving sensitive customer information exposed through vulnerabilities such as open shares on Windows servers.
The Unseen Risks of Desktops and Laptops
Moreover, the combined disk space of an organization's desktops and laptops can far exceed the total storage capacity of its data centers. This is especially pertinent for larger organizations with a geographically dispersed workforce. Despite the accelerating shift towards cloud storage, the convenience of local file storage continues to be a preferred choice for many users. This preference, coupled with the inherent risks of local and cloud storage caches, underscores the necessity of subjecting desktops and laptops to the same rigorous scanning and analysis as all other data storage devices.
A Unified Approach to Data Security
In the face of the complex, ever-evolving cyber landscape, where users daily interact with unstructured data across various platforms, from local devices to cloud and network-attached storage, the importance of a unified security strategy cannot be overstated. Ensuring the protection of every endpoint against unauthorized access is not just an IT concern; it's a business imperative. By adopting a strategy that includes scanning every hard drive and system, organizations can proactively safeguard their data against external and internal threats. If you're not actively searching for and protecting this data, rest assured, cyber adversaries will find it and exploit it.
Sensitive unstructured data doesn’t care where it lives, and neither do the hackers or insider threats that are trying to find and use it. When it comes to securing data, organizations tend to focus on the big, network-attached devices, filer servers or document management systems such as SharePoint. In the process, they tend to ignore desktops, laptops, print servers, or even critical Windows application servers. Oftentimes, your most sensitive, critical data can live in all those devices. You can be assured that the people attempting to steal this sensitive data are not ignoring these devices and neither should you. At SPHERE, we take a “scan every hard drive” approach. That means regardless of location, device type or size, it should be scanned, analyzed and, if required, remediated. You simply don’t have the luxury of assuming a specific device will not have data that could pose a threat if it were stolen or exposed.
We typically hear “My application servers are locked down and have very little storage.” A single Excel file or PDF with thousands of your customer’s social security numbers can sit in a file that’s only a few kilobytes in size. Application servers having little storage does not count as security. I’ve personally seen developers find all sorts of creative ways to make Security teams lose sleep at night. Things like open shares on Windows servers with customer statements including names, address, account numbers and balances. Should there be a breach, your customers will not be happy with the explanation that you didn’t protect their PII because it wasn’t stored on a NetApp.
But what about desktops and laptops? If you take the total disk space of all your desktops combined, it could account for 10 times the amount of total storage you have in your data centers. This is especially true for larger organizations with a widely dispersed workforce. These devices are ripe opportunities for unsecured sensitive data. Despite the seemingly aggressive move to cloud, users still store files locally for convenience, never mind the local caches you typically have with network or cloud storage. So desktops should be scanned, analyzed and controlled just like everything else.
In the current ever-evolving, complex landscape, where your users can interact with some unstructured data stored locally on their laptop, SharePoint, cloud or network attached storage all in the same day, it’s become increasingly important to ensure that all of these end points are protected. You must scan every hard drive, every system. Because if you’re not finding this data in your environment and protecting it, you can be pretty sure the bad guys will find it and exploit it.
