Currently it's rare to find someone who doesn't recognize the critical importance of data security. However, there's still a significant gap in understanding the extensive impact that data security has across various areas within organizations.

Elements such as data governance and test data protection have become fundamental pillars, and for good reason: only through appropriate policies and procedures in these areas can the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the data that organizations handle be ensured.

It's estimated that the total volume of data created, captured, and consumed globally in 2022 was 97 zettabytes, a figure expected to rise to 181 zettabytes by 2025.

This is coupled with a context in which cyber threats are multiplying and becoming increasingly complex: their economic damage is projected to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, a 300% increase from 2015 figures.

Cyberattacks today are part of an industry with multi-billion dollar business volumes, where attacks are executed using increasingly advanced tools and strategies.

In this context, and within an ever-more interconnected and thus exposed business environment, data security becomes indispensable. We explore its impact on some key areas of organizations.

What is Data Security

Data security includes measures taken by organizations to protect digital information from threats such as unauthorized access, corruption, or theft at any stage of the data lifecycle.

It's a broad concept encompassing various aspects of security, from the physical protection of devices to the implementation of access controls.

Common data security measures include encryption techniques (transforming data into unreadable formats except for those with access), data erasure (ensuring data cannot be recovered), data masking (hiding personal identification information), and all actions around data resilience (the ability of organizations to recover from a cyberattack).

Moreover, a range of tools act as allies for organizations looking to ensure data security. This includes data masking platforms, Test Data Management (TDM), and data archiving tools, among others.

Watch the Orange success case and learn how icaria TDM has radically changed its test data.

Data Security Objectives

• Protect an organization's information assets from cyberattacks, human errors, and internal threats
• Enhance data visibility, location, and usage
• Comply with regulatory requirements and support audits

The Importance of Data Security for Your Business: 3 Key Areas

Regulatory Compliance and Penalties

Data protection has materialized in recent years into various regulations surrounding this issue. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stands out. These laws impose significant penalties on organizations that fail to comply with their requirements, aimed at protecting personal and sensitive information of citizens and ensuring ARCO rights.

For example, the GDPR foresees penalties of up to 4% of a company's global annual turnover. To these substantial amounts are added the significant brand reputation consequences affecting those who fail to comply with data security regulations.

There are also other regulations and laws to consider when dealing with data to avoid penalties, such as LOPD (Organic Law on Data Protection), LFPDPPP (Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties), LPDP (Personal Data Protection Law)...

Data Governance and Quality Data

Data governance encompasses a set of policies and practices aimed at ensuring the quality, integrity, availability, and confidentiality of data in an organization.

This implies a framework and mapping of procedures for companies to know how to manage, use, and protect their data. This results in several advantages for organizations:

• Guarantee in data accuracy, consistency, and integrity (avoiding, for example, unauthorized manipulations)
• Access control to ensure data confidentiality
• Regulatory compliance
• Risk identification and management
• Maximization of data value and potential for the organization

Data governance thus becomes a fundamental strategy for ensuring data quality.

Test Data Generation

We've mentioned earlier that data security refers to the entire data lifecycle. We expand on this notion when talking about data security in test environments.

Through TDM tools, companies can ensure the protection of sensitive information, in addition to regulatory compliance (applying to both production and test data).

Tools like icaria TDM facilitate the application of data masking techniques, the generation of synthetic data, and the mapping of sensitive data, among other functions.

Thus, in addition to full regulatory coverage, companies gain automation and efficiency improvements in test data preparation time. The result is an acceleration of the software development process, all without compromising security.

A look at these three aspects reveals how data security has a comprehensive impact on a multitude of aspects within organizations.

In this regard, it's vital to have quality tools and expert human teams capable of providing full coverage on complex and multifaceted aspects like those we've discussed.

icaria Technology Tools

At icaria Technology, we work to help companies ensure data security. That's why we've developed a series of tools that facilitate data protection in various aspects.

For one, icaria TDM is aimed at achieving quality test data while protecting sensitive information during the execution of automated tests. It's a platform that comes to revolutionize software development and testing, focusing on data security and improving testing times by up to 70%.

Additionally, our icaria Data Governance tool allows implementing data control and quality assurance processes within organizations. Through this tool, companies gain benefits such as:

• Total visibility and quick and efficient access to their data
• Safe organization and classification of data
• Improvement in data reliability, accuracy, and overall quality
• Promotion of effective collaboration among teams around data security
• Access to business standards and rules, avoiding duplicities and errors
• Regulatory compliance and auditing implementation

Want to learn more about how we can help ensure data security in your organization? Contact our team.