Organizations are increasingly concerned about high-profile employees’ information being exposed on the deep and dark web. The CrowdStrike Counter Adversary Operations team is often asked to find fake social media accounts and personally identifiable information (PII) that might be exposed. Impersonations and leaked PII can unravel lives and ruin the reputations of individuals and their organizations.

As your business evolves to serve more users, your applications and infrastructure will generate an increasing volume of logs, which may contain sensitive data such as credit card numbers, IP addresses, and tokens. When you collect sensitive data, you may be subject to laws such as GDPR—which restricts the transfer of personal data across borders, and you may face legal consequences if this data is exposed outside your infrastructure.

Sensitive personal data is among the most valuable information attached to us; it’s so valuable that there are international regulations for its maintenance, storage, and management. It is data that contains essential details about us, like Social Security Numbers (SSNs), bank accounts, tax IDs, health insurance data, and all the other “unique-to-one” credentials.

With the growing dependence of businesses on digital platforms for storing and processing sensitive information, the threat of data exfiltration has become a pressing issue. The evolution of exfiltration techniques has given rise to threat actors who exploit insecure devices and engage in suspicious activities to steal valuable data. These activities often involve unauthorized physical access or social engineering attacks to obtain login credentials with malicious intent.

Data is not just a strategic asset. It’s the lifeblood of your organization. Losing access to any strategic asset can threaten an organization’s viability; without plants and equipment, manufacturers would find it difficult to succeed, and service providers can’t operate without brand recognition. Similarly, without data, your organization could be left in a state of complete and utter paralysis, unable to function or recover.

This is Part 7 in my ongoing project to cover 30 cybersecurity topics in 30 weekly blog posts. The full series can be found here. Far too many organizations place Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Protection at the bottom of their priority list due to the perceived difficulty in its deployment. When there are in fact some easy approaches to getting started with protecting your data.

Regardless of the industry, the risks associated with data loss are significant. Financial services, healthcare, government, technology, and many other fields – all rely heavily on sensitive data. The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) reports that the number of data compromises in the United States hit a record high of 1,802 in 2022. This emphasizes the alarming increase in data security incidents.

We’re thrilled to announce that Nightfall was selected as the “Data Security Solution of the Year” in the 2024 Data Breakthrough Awards. With enterprises scrambling to stay on the cutting edge of innovation, it’s all too easy to lose sight of data stewardship. In addition to SaaS apps, email, and endpoints, now enterprises must also safeguard their generative AI (GenAI) applications, including both custom and third-party GenAI tools.