Implementing Information Lifecycle Security (ILS)

摘要

Information security is currently reaching a crisis point that makes it one of the biggest problems facing companies today. Even relatively few security breaches affect vast numbers of people. A review of stories that ran in technical publications during 2005 revealed that only 102 security breaches were reported, but they affected over 56 million people. These breaches are not just hitting smaller firms with fewer resources either. Severe breaches were reported by companies including Ford Motor Company, Bank of America, and Time Warner as well as smaller firms, such as DSW Retail, UT Medical Center, and Lucas City Children's Services. In fact, the Computer Security Institute reported in 2002 that 90 percent of all organizations had detected computer security breaches. The cost of these breaches is staggering as well. The FBI's Computer Crime Security Survey reported that the cost of each security breach averaged over $2 million.This problem has reached a crisis point because of a startling vulnerability that grows hand-in-hand with both the geometric increase in generated data and with the way users are handling that data. Data on notebook computers is a prime example. The Search Security Newsletter estimated that as much as 60 percent of corporate data assets are carried around on notebook computers or are stored on unprotected PCs. As the average worker continues taking advantage of the efficiency of e-mail and easy file transfers, the amount of total e-mails containing unprotected data is increasing. A Radicati Group study estimated that an average worker generates 30,000 e-mails annually-a number that is constantly growing. This e-mail data alone amounts to about 3 GB of data generated by each user annually.