Database Encryption: The Most Crucial Defensive Strategy for Your Information

Database encryption must be a part of your data protection strategy. The news is full of stories of breaches, hacks and other cyber attacks. Why? Because private information is valuable! Cyber thieves target sensitive details – passwords, social security numbers, and other private information that can be sold on the Dark Web. Yet many companies store data in plain text, assuming perimeter and network defenses are sufficient. If criminals get past the perimeter, those databases remain vulnerable. Protect them further with database encryption.

What Is Database Encryption?

In today’s environment of persistent online threats, database encryption is critically important to your business. This mechanism keeps your information safe and secure. In essence, database encryption is the process of encoding data by making it unreadable to others through a two step function: encrypting the data store, and then decrypting it with a valid key upon retrieval.

Encryption, a basic building block of data security, allows systems to conceal information by altering it to look like random data. The information that sits in your database, data-at rest, represents the largest target for theft due to the sheer volume of information organizations typically store in their databases. Database encryption makes information useless and unreadable unless accessed by authorized users with the correct key.

How Does It Work?

Database encryption converts readable plaintext to incomprehensible data known as ciphertext. Encrypted data can only be read after it’s been decrypted by an authorized user or process. For data-at-rest, you need a mechanism that keeps the data stored on the disk encrypted at all times, and yet can be utilized in real-time by authorized users. This mechanism is also known as Transparent Data Encryption (TDE). See our Beginner’s Guide to Encryption for Compliance and Data Protection for a more detailed explanation.

Why Is It Important?

Protecting Your Company’s Assets

Encryption ensures that your company assets are protected from being accessed by unauthorized users. Customer data and intellectual property are important components of your business that make you unique in your space. Protect them!

Avoid Security Attacks

While perimeter defenses are important to bolster, what happens when a hacker gets through or an attack comes from an inside job? Encryption adds a layer of protection, making the data useless if it is stolen.

Data Responsibility

Your customer expects you to protect their data. As a responsible corporation, you must do what you need to maintain your customers’ trust. By encrypting their stored data, organizations can convey to their customers that their data is safe. On top of protecting their own affairs, organizations must also deal with the increasing regulations of safeguarding customer data.

Compliance With Regulations and Privacy Laws

Organizations world wide are seeing increased regulations to protect customer data. See our round up of Privacy Laws in 2022. Virtually every privacy law, including HIPAA, GDPR and CCPA, requires corporations to secure customer data. Encrypting customer information is an important tool to protect against theft and exposure.

How Do You Protect Your Data?

That’s where NetLib Security can help. Our Encryptionizer solution secures databases in physical, virtual or cloud environments. Our security software is a transparent data encryption solution that a DBA can deploy in a few clicks, requires no programming changes, and has virtually no impact on performance. It is especially beneficial for legacy systems or third party software where you do not have access to the code, or that is too costly to modify.

Encryptionizer is a cost-effective alternative to Microsoft SQL Server’s TDE without the need for additional upgrades or maintenance. Our solution can also be deployed against any other Windows database management system, including MySQL, Oracle, DB2, and PostgreSQL.

For developers of distributed applications and systems, Encryptionizer makes it easy to apply an encryption layer without requiring changes to your code. It is even possible to add encryption to installations already in the field.

About NetLib Security

NetLib Security has spent the past 20+ years developing a powerful, patented solution that starts by setting up a formidable offense which can be managed from anywhere in the world, across every environment where your data resides: physical, virtual and cloud. Our platform is geared to simplify the process for you while ensuring unprecedented levels of security are in place.

You can simplify your data security needs by utilizing Encryptionizer to satisfy your security requirements quickly, and with confidence. These days it’s essential to protect the safety, integrity and confidentiality of sensitive data. NetLib Security’s unique encryption solutions are an easy and cost effective way to proactively and transparently protect your data.

We also understand budget considerations are a constant concern, which is why we designed an affordable data security platform to protect, manage and defend while enabling the growing areas of compliance. Protecting your data doesn’t have to break the bank, but not protecting it will.

NetLib Security works closely with government agencies, healthcare organizations, small to large enterprises spanning financial services, credit card processors, distributors, and resellers to deliver a flexible data security solution to meet their ever changing needs.

——————-

Mar 29, 2022
Originally published at: https://www.netlibsecurity.com
Copyright: NetLib Security, Inc.