Data Security and Privacy

¶ … Security and Privacy

Five Central Concerns About Data Security and Privacy

The five central concerns about data security and privacy that are the most common in personal and business use of computers are presented in this paper. Password security, the need companies have to keep their employees up-to-date with security training, and defining checks and balances to make sure information is not compromised are the three most important according to research. Website security and giving website users the option of defining privacy settings are also very important (Casal, Flavian, Guinaliu, 2007).

Five Central Concerns About Data Security and Privacy

The most common way a computer system is broken into is when a hacker, thief or dishonest person gets a password and uses it to get unauthorized information. Passwords are often very simple, with "123" or "password" being used the most often. This is why many security training programs will always tell users to change their passwords from the system password (Landau, 2008). Many people use their pet's names and passwords, which provides their friends and people they know them with quick access to their systems as well. There are also specialized computer programs called "key loggers" that capture every key a person types. A key logger program will capture passwords into a special file that a hacker or thief can get to at a later time, and immediately know how to get into a computer system.

The second concern regarding data security and privacy is the lack of security training many companies do. From researching this topic, it appears the bigger a company is, the more they ignore security training (Landau, 2008). It's because many of these very large companies are too busy to do training and expect their employees to already know a lot about security. This however doesn't work out as many examples of company-wide break-ins have shown.

A third area of data security and privacy are the checks and balances needed to make sure private, highly valuable and confidential data stays safe in a company. These checks and balances are the sign-offs and approvals needed to keep data safe for years, only accessible by those that need to get access to it. Checks and balances force companies to make sure people responsible for their data are accessing and using it in a secure way.

The fourth area of data security and privacy is the protection of websites. This area gets a lot of attention in newspapers, magazines and online. It is however one of the most difficult areas to defend against intruders, many of which have advanced software they use to break into sites (Casal, Flavian, Guinaliu, 2007). Website security is always in a state of improvement with the best companies, and there needs to be guidelines established to keep new improvements always moving forward.