Top Trends to Guide Your Data Protection Strategy in 2022

With the number of data breaches increasing to record highs, some trends can guide users to set up a functional data protection strategy in 2022. In 2021, criminals executed data breaches pushing many cybersecurity solutions providers to come up with ways to protect people from these attacks.

The Identity Theft Research Center reported that by September 2021 the total number of data breaches had already exceeded those of 2020 by 17%.

2021 Data Breach Investigations Report from Verizon discovered that phishing was present in over 36% of breaches, meaning that this type of attack continues to be a threat to corporate email, and possibly more so as employees work far removed from the corporate network perimeters.

With 2021 expected to become a record-breaking year for data breaches, data breach protections are going to become a major consideration for most organizations as we go into 2022. You have to remain on top of the ever-evolving landscape or risk sinking entirely.

It is highly critical to protect business and institutional data from destruction, damage, or attacks in the current hyper-connected digital economy. For now, it is not an exaggeration to say that the viability of each business currently depends on continuous access to its integral data and systems.

Managing and protecting data is not an easy task. You have to constantly check and review the ever-changing data landscape and remain alert as you review new tools and challenges that come up along the way. You also need to know the privacy regulations and security threats that come up, which might arise from anywhere around the world.

TPOmap advises that these are the top trends that data and analytics professionals need to pay attention to in 2022 and why.

Data protection policies get re-evaluated and altered in the wake of remote work

The rapid growth in remote work has importantly resulted in the proliferation of mobile devices that require a lot of access to the corporate infrastructure. That has, in turn, resulted in new security risks that need a dynamic data protection strategy that will cope with all the threats that come up.

These risks come up as the users install possibly malware-infected software and expose a lot of company data to foreign networks, including those of their friends and family.

IT security teams must not ignore the fact that most of these devices belong to the employees. It means that the standard rules and mandates for enforcing new updates might just not work, needing a re-evaluation of the current data protection policies.

Zero trust takes on massive importance as part of a strong data protection strategy

The traditional security models appear to assume that all elements within the network can be fully trusted. On the contrary, zero trust operates on the assumption that no user, whether internal or external to the network, can be trusted automatically.

Zero trust is not just a mere buzzword. TPOmap experts believe that it is rapidly becoming a necessity. IDG’s 2020 Security Priorities Study discovered that 40% of the survey respondents were actively looking for zero trust technologies, up from 18% recorded in the previous year.

An additional 23% said that they planned to deploy zero trust in 2022. The adoption of this technology has surged in the past year, but many other firms and organizations are yet to take advantage of it.

However, analysts and experts believe that a lot of growth will be seen in 2022. One of the primary reasons that a zero-trust security model is crucial currently is that enterprises no longer seem to host data in-house. Instead, they host their data on various platforms and services that reside both on-premises and off-premises.

It means that most of the employees and partners access applications via a wide range of devices in many geographical locations. Notably, the standard model of security is now not appropriate for the current complex networks. Zero trust models are more powerful and relevant, mainly in this time of widespread and lots of remote work.

Encryption will be utilized by many more industries

Encryption technology appears to be becoming more widespread, and this trend is expected to continue. The highly regulated sectors like healthcare and finance have become the early adopters. However, encryption can and needs to be used by many other industries and needs to be a part of a major data protection strategy.

Many other organizations will adopt this technology after they get to know that encrypted data is now useless to criminals and that the encryption is practical and might solve many challenges surrounding data privacy.

That is mostly true as more firms have to grapple with many regulations, including GDPR which mainly needs organizations to incorporate encryption to protect consumers’ data and to minimize the risks that come with data transfers.

The next-generation encryption technologies like encryption-as-a-service (EaaS) are expected to make encryption far more accessible to many other organizations. Full disclosure to the EaaS provider is needed.

With the incorporation of EaaS, organizations can readily access and utilize their data without needing to reveal any of their encryption keys or data content to anybody. This data protection strategy boosts their data security profile.

Utilizing a service also comes with huge scaling capabilities that do not compromise performance. As more data is pushed to the cloud, a critical cybersecurity point for EaaS is that the organizations do not always need to disclose their decryption keys, which is normally needed by the cloud service providers.

Data sovereignty too create bigger complexity for data management

As firms keep growing and becoming more globally interconnected, these rules surrounding data privacy have become highly complicated. For instance, a firm based in Germany might use a US-based firm like Google or Amazon to send and store data.

But the question comes; where does that German firm’s data legally reside and what are the rules that govern it? The best answers to these questions are still complex and unclear. Global experts of legal, IT, and HR are discussing how to interpret the continuously changing reality of data processing.

That is the reason why 86% of IT decision-makers say that their organizations have been affected by the changing compliance needs for data privacy, as highlighted by the global survey that was done by Dimensional Research.

Firms and institutions no longer have any data lake at their corporate headquarters that IT can focus on protecting. Nowadays, a lot of their data resides in the cloud. It means that they have a globally distributed data infrastructure. They need to keep track of sovereignty issues in various jurisdictions, and to do that, they require help.

Cloud service providers need to work closely with clients to come up with a data protection strategy to manage compliance and sovereignty with various rules. In the coming year, the onus will be on businesses and public cloud providers to enhance compliance and data sovereignty issues by better understanding what is in the petabytes of the data they store and regulations around all elements of the data.

Businesses and companies can no longer become satisfied by just backing up data. They will need to get smart about their data content and then put defined policies in place around the same content.

Data Protection Officer (DPO) will grow in strategic importance

The DPO is an enterprise security leadership role that, under some conditions, is needed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Based on the latest GDPR statistics, the demand for DPOs has surged by at least 700% in the past five years.

DPOs need to have expert knowledge of data protection practices and laws while overseeing data protection strategies for their firms and guaranteeing compliance with GDPR requirements.

The duties of the DPO are poised to grow in strategic importance in 2022, mainly as the responsibilities of DPOs extend far beyond traditional IT to include a holistic view of data privacy, education, and security.

These DPOs can open new opportunities across the organization. For instance, in a world filled with remote work opportunities, the DPO will become a strategic enabler for business, mostly as it now becomes clear that the virtual workforce is here for the long term.

Protecting your Data

Cybercriminals exploited the opportunity that came with the move to remote work in 2020 and then doubled down in 2021. Last year was, therefore, a record year for the data breaches.

As regulators and watchdogs increased their pressure compelling all organizations to secure their data, it is important to know that these trends and technologies will help in safeguarding distributed corporate networks that now lack real perimeter. Remote work is always changing data protection strategy goals and policies.

Experts agree that encryption and zero trust have become necessities as tools to combat the onslaught of attacks.

TPOmap is the ideal solution for better data privacy

TPOmap is the #1 GDPR compliance software and a dependable collaborative platform for companies. Our analysts and experts can help and offer guidance to your organization on the path towards achieving total GDPR compliance. They also offer advice on the best trends to guide your data protection strategy to keep all data safe.

TPOmap offers a collaborative easy-to-use platform to efficiently manage all GDPR aspects, such as processing records, privacy governance, data protection strategy, policies, risks, vendors, and data subject rights.

TPOmap is the perfect GDPR compliance software, based on a smart mix of automatization, legal content & human support to reduce resources and costs for implementing all the essential GDPR compliance measures including privacy notices and processing agreements.

You can get in touch with our experts and request a free trial today.