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Protecting Your Data

You must protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data:

  • Confidentiality means that only those people who are supposed to see their data can see it. In the military environment, that has two attributes: right to know and need to know, and you need both to be allowed to see data. Because I’m in marketing I have the right to see things like product plans, but because I’m not working on Project Alpha I do not have the need to see Project Alpha’s product plans. Depending on the importance and sensitivity of Project Alpha, you might want to make sure I can’t see its data.
  • Integrity means that only authorized processes are allowed to modify data and only in very specific ways. For example, it means that the transaction I send to the Cloud arrives unchanged at the service provider, and the response comes back to me unmodified. It means data stored in my archive hasn’t been changed while it is just sitting there for years.
  • Availability means that the data is accessible when needed. If in order to satisfy my customers I need to respond to them in less than a second, I need to make sure I can always get any required response from the Cloud in time to meet that need. Ignoring any Internet related delays, it takes over an eighth of a second to get an answer from the other side of the Earth. Adding those delays, it can be close to half a second.

Data is in three “places” and there are security concerns around each:

  • Data-in-motion as it moves through networks like Local Area Networks (LAN), wide-area networks (WAN), storage networks (SAN), and the Internet. The Cloud extends the distance of these networks.
  • Data-at-rest as it is stored in storage systems like SAN and NAS; local hard disks on workstations, laptops, tablets, and cell phones; and escapable media like thumb drives, CDs and DVDs. Data gets stored many times in archives, backup, disaster recovery sites, and email messages. The Cloud can increase the number and geographic dispersal of this stored information.
  • Data-in-process inside of a workstation or server. Virtualization and the Cloud increase the risk of that data being available to others.

Check out our security questions you should answer before you sign a contract with a Cloud Service Provider.

We can help. Contact Us with your questions.

The Unisys Stealth Solution for Network is a tranformational way to protect your data-in-motion in the Cloud, and anywhere. Download a short presentation.