TEE103 - Data Security: Importance, Mechanisms, and Secure Sharing

This report comprehensively examines the critical aspects of data security within networked environments. It highlights the importance of safeguarding data against threats like website defacement and data theft, emphasizing the necessity for organizations to protect their sensitive information. The report details various data protection mechanisms, including access control, authentication, backups and recovery, data erasure, data masking, and encryption. Furthermore, it explores different methods for securely sharing information across networks, such as file transfer protocols, peer-to-peer networks, removable storage media, virtual private networks, email encryption, password managers, and encrypted messengers. The document also touches upon regulatory compliance and best practices for maintaining data security, offering a holistic view of data protection strategies. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Data Security

Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Main Body 1
Importance of data security 1
Data protection mechanisms 2
Ways to securely share information across a networked environment 3
Conclusion 4
References 5

Introduction
Data security can be defined as safeguarding the data and information with the help of digital devices either hardware or software from any unauthorised corruption or
theft or any accessibility throughout the entire lifecycle of data privacy. It is the practice of protecting the data from any unwanted actions or cyber-attack. It protects
the data from website defacement, leakage of data, hacking of services and stolen data. Data breaching is one of the most dangerous parts of data security. Data security
and its tools and techniques are responsible for safeguarding the same (Bertino and Ferrari, 2018). Therefore, the following discussion is based on the importance of
data security, different mechanisms of data protection and several ways to securely share information across a networked environment with proper conclusion.
Main Body
SECTION B
Importance of data security
Data and information security is highly important for every organisation and even for the individual as well. Nowadays information is considered as the
most valuable asset for any organisation. This is because it relates to the major functions of the company. Such as transactions and knowledge along with the
communications and data bases and also the infrastructure as well. It is one of the most essential legal and regulatory requirements of any company that the
information and data must be safe and secure so that the company can be safeguarded from huge losses. Security of data and information helps the organisation in
keeping their sensitive big data out of the hands of their competitors (Zhang, Chen, Zhao and Hu, 2018). This is because if competitors find any important and Private
data then they can misuse such information against the company and breach the data in the marketplace. This can result in bad reputation and loss for the
organisation. That is why data security is important for the company. Security of data information also supports the organisation in retaining their data integrity in such
a way that the organisation can effectively and efficiently alter and modify the information as per the needs and requirements of the company. This is also considered
as the records and database Management by some specialists and expertise in technical fields. Moreover, security of data and information enables easy and
comfortable access to data at any time and anywhere whenever it is required in order to operate the business in an effective manner. The entire processes are done in
a safe manner so that security can be maintained within the organisation and data transfer from one place to another can only be known by the people who are
authorised and authenticated with the particular information. If a company does not take any major steps to secure their data and information then they can get into the
wrong hands and can even result in the shutting down of the company (Zhang, 2018).
Data protection mechanisms
There are different mechanisms to protect the data and information within an organisation which is important for the company to follow and implement for
the security of data. Access control is one of the mechanisms in which only those employees will get the access to the data who are authenticated and authorised for
the particular information. This is identified with the help of password or any biometrics systems that are accessible and which are not. This is a mechanism for access
control. Authentication is another mechanism in which some of the employees are authenticated to access the data. This is done with the help of passwords and
security tokens. Even the swipe cards are also used so that because of these components they can easily access the data. Other employees who are not having such
components cannot access which means that they are not authenticated to access the data. Backups and recovery is also one of the mechanisms in which the
important and private data which is confidential in nature is backed up and recovered on a timely basis so that if data corrupt or losses occurred in the organisation
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can easily backup and recover the data without any losses (Sollins, 2019). Data erasure is also another mechanism in which the organisation needs to take care of
what data is useless and what is important so that the useless data can be removed and important data can be kept freely in the technical systems. This can help the
organisation in the management of data in an effective and efficient manner. Data masking is one of the mechanisms in which the software is used which hides the
information with the help of some letters and numbers which are also known as proxy letters. Such information can only be read by the people who have access to
such software and have the knowledge about reading such information. This helps the organisation in preventing the breaching of data. Encryption is another
mechanism in which the data and information is saved in the file which is in the unreadable format so that only those people can read and modify the data who have
the knowledge about encryption and decryption procedure of such information within the organisation. Confidentiality, integrity and availability are the main elements
of data security which are to be maintained by the organisation at all times while using the big data in the company. There are some regulations which are credited
with the data security such as general data protection regulation, California consumer protection act, health insurance portability and accountability act, payment card
industry data security standard and international standards organisation. There are some technologies which are associated with the security of data and information
such as data auditing, data real-time alerts, data risk assessment, data minimization and purging stale data. There are some of the best practices for ensuring the data
security within an organisation such as organisation can quarantine the sensitive files, behaviour based permissions must be implemented by the company and
deleting the unused data is important. There are also some capabilities and solutions to data security which can be executed by the organisations such as by knowing
where the data lives, by checking the user access and by blocking the high risk activities (Tao, Bhuiyan, Rahman and Li, 2019).
Ways to securely share information across a networked environment
There are several ways through which the organisation can securely share their data and information across a networked environment. File transfer protocol programs
is one of the common file transfer systems on the networks in which the organisation can easily share their data without any hesitation across the network to anyone.
Peer-to-peer networks is another way in which the network is created by the organisation where the trusted people are connected and the organisation shares the
data in such a network that can be safe and authenticated as well. Removable storage media is also one of the ways in which the external USB is used by the
organisation in order to share the data which is considered as secure sharing of data. This is because the file is only transferred to the person who has handed over
the USB storage media and no one else. Online file sharing services are also available for sharing the data and information safely across the network such as Google
drive, Microsoft onedrive, Amazon drive and many more (Abi Sen and Basahel, 2019). Moreover, there are other ways also in which the sharing of sensitive information
can be secure over the internet. Using a virtual private network is one of the ways in which the private network is formulated by the organisation in a restricted manner
so that the data and information shared across the private network can only be accessed by the authenticated and authorised employees. The benefit of this way is
that the owner of the organisation can easily have the knowledge about what data information is shared to whom if they establish the virtual private network within their
organisation. Using email encryption is another way in which the data is shared across the organisation internally as well as externally. Using password managers to
share passwords is a type of software and information system in which the organisation can even share the highly confidential passwords to the person who has the
accessibility of a particular data without any breaching of the information. Using encrypted messengers is also another way in which the organisation can share their
data security while installing the software messengers which can share the message from one employee to another who have the accessibility towards the data.
Therefore, these are the ways in which the organisation can share information security across the networked environment (Lin, He, Kumar and Huang, 2018).
SECTION C
INCOMEANDEXPENSESPROJECTIONS
2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
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Sales 10,000 12000 15600 18720 20592 22651.2
%Growthoverthepreviousyear 20% 30% 20% 10% 10%
Materials 1700 2040 2652 3182.4 3500.64 3850.704
Wages 1400 1680 2184 2620.8 2882.88 3171.168
Otherbenefits 210 252 327.6 393.12 432.432 475.6752
Others 800 960 1248 1497.6 1647.36 1812.096
TotalCostofGoodsSold 4110 4932 6411.6 7693.92 8463.312 9309.643
Salary:Office 1000 1080 1166.4 1259.712 1360.489 1469.328
Salary:Sales 800 960 1248 1497.6 1647.36 1812.096
OtherBenefits 1136 1243.2 1378.56 1514.304 1640.54 1777.384
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Advertising&Promotions 250 300 390 468 514.8 566.28
Depreciation 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000
Miscellaneous 2100 2200 2500 3000 2100 2500
TotalGeneral&Admin.Expenses
TotalOperatingCosts
InterestonLoans
Pre-taxIncome
Tax
Profit
Conclusion
It is concluded that security is an important concept to learn and study so that its applications can be applied in real world organisations. This is because nowadays big
data is becoming a vast concept among technical organisations in order to utilise the updated technology and advancement of it. It is impossible to think about the
survival of organisations without adopting technology and big data. Therefore, it is important to analyse the importance of data security for each and every company
using the big data concept. It is essential to examine the data protection mechanism in order to protect the data. It is significant to gain knowledge about several ways
to safely share information across a networked environment. Hence the support covers all such areas in order to better understand the conception of data security.
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References
Books and Journals
Bertino, E. and Ferrari, E., 2018. Big data security and privacy. In A Comprehensive Guide Through the Italian Database Research Over the Last 25 Years (pp. 425-439). Springer,
Cham.
Zhang, D., 2018, October. Big data security and privacy protection. In 8th International Conference on Management and Computer Science (ICMCS 2018) (Vol. 77, pp. 275-278).
Atlantis Press.
Zhang, J., Chen, B., Zhao, Y. and Hu, F., 2018. Data security and privacy-preserving in edge computing paradigm: Survey and open issues. IEEE access, 6, pp.18209-18237.
Tao, H., Bhuiyan, M.Z.A., Rahman, M.A. and Li, J., 2019. Economic perspective analysis of protecting big data security and privacy. Future Generation Computer Systems, 98,
pp.660-671.
Sollins, K.R., 2019. IoT big data security and privacy versus innovation. IEEE Internet of Things Journal. 6(2). pp.1628-1635.
Abi Sen, A.A. and Basahel, A.M., 2019, March. A Comparative Study between Security and Privacy. In 2019 6th International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global
Development (INDIACom) (pp. 1282-1286). IEEE.
Lin, C., He, D., Kumar, N. and Huang, X., 2018. Security and privacy for the internet of drones: Challenges and solutions. IEEE Communications Magazine. 56(1). pp.64-69.
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