Data of a business are as important as its financial assets. If these fall in the hands of competitors, the existence of the company is often endangered. There is always a risk involved, if backup data carriers or USB sticks fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, confidential data have to be particularly protected, e.g. by means of enciphering. How can this be done? Where can enciphering of sensitive data be carried out?
There is, however, also another side of the coin: enciphering itself may become a serious problem, if authorized people are not able to gain again access again to data, if they lose some access key. Therefore it is important to observe security standards when enciphering business data. Which standards? How are access keys to be managed during the life cycle of business data?
Answers to these questions are given in a new BITKOM guideline in German called “Verschlüsselung von Bestandsdaten aus Rechenzentrumssicht”. This document is addressed to IT service providers and IT managers in businesses. In a clear way it explains the important points when securing business data and how to protect confidential data from being used by unauthorized people.
The guideline is available for free-of-charge download. 