With the massive growth in use of  personal computing and mobile computing devices together with cloud storage of data  the actual storing, retrieving and protecting of data have become extremely critical if not much more complex tasks.

Forty years ago the majority of data an individual or a corporation would retain was in document formats.  Some data was stored on microfilm and in some cases digital data was kept on magnetic tapes.  In general though the information was recorded on paper and stored in files, binders, books and other various document forms.

One of the key attributes of storing data this way was the restrictions it imposed on how much data could be stored and limitations to sharing.  To view the information often you had to be in physical possession of the documents which were either delivered to you by courier, or you personally came to the location where they were held.   Fax technology was used for sending small numbers of pages over long distances but generally was not practical for large volumes of documents.  And for storage, paper takes a lot more room than digitally stored data and so the available space was a limiting factor.

With the reduction, even elimination of these space and sharing constraints it’s easy to store massive amounts of information and to share these with others in mere moments.

And the downside

This wholesale change in the way data is collected, stored and shared creates serious concerns about who can access what data and given little limitation on the amount that can be stored we find these days a multitude of duplication – the same data is stored in multiple copies and multiple locations.

What are the key principles to good data security

The key here whether we are talking about personal or corporate data is to be aware of what it is, how important it is and being sure you have the appropriate level of safeguards in place commensurate with the classification of the data.  (You really don’t want your data misused).  At a high level here is a two step process to help you ensure the proper attention is being applied to your data.

1. Classify your data – sensitive (e.g., your credit card numbers), private ( e.g., your weight), limited audience (e.g., your birthday), public (e.g., your phone number).
2. Protect your data based on classification, that is things like not storing or sharing sensitive data at all or if you do encrypt it when stored so only you can retrieve it.  Of course for things you consider public don’t worry about storing or sharing too much, you might want to even proactively share it.