Data Security Benchmarking

As organizations continue to face growing cybersecurity threats, it's more important than ever to have a clear understanding of your data security posture and how it compares to industry standards. Data security benchmarking is the process of evaluating your organization's security controls, policies, and practices against established frameworks and metrics. By understanding your baseline, you can make informed decisions about where to focus resources to improve your cybersecurity.

The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) provides some insights we can use for data security benchmarking. This comprehensive annual report analyzes thousands of data breaches and cybersecurity incidents to identify the latest trends, patterns, and best practices. According to the 2024 DBIR, the most common causes of data breaches continue to be phishing attacks (36% of incidents), credential theft (29%), and ransomware (25%). 

In addition to the DBIR, we can apply the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to our benchmarking exercise to help organizations assess their data protection measures. Using NIST CSF, we can focus on three key areas: data discovery and classification (NIST’s Identify category), data access controls (Protect), and data security monitoring (Detect/Respond).

Data Discovery and Classification

Effective data security starts with knowing what data you have, where it resides, and how sensitive it is. Conducting a comprehensive data discovery exercise to identify and inventory all structured and unstructured data across your organization is critical. This includes not just production systems, but also backups, archives, and cloud storage.  It is also important to inventory development and test systems too - since they often contain mirrored copies of unsanitized production data. Care should be taken to assess on-prem, cloud native, SaaS and PaaS platforms wherever possible.  Some of your largest data stores may be in PaaS platforms like Snowflake.

Once you have a complete data map, the next step is to classify your data according to its level of sensitivity and criticality. ISO27001 suggests using a system that allows multiple classification levels based on sensitivity and business criticality (ex. public, internal, confidential, restricted). Public data is information that can be freely shared externally, while internal data may include policies and procedures, confidential data may refer to intellectual property and business agreements, and restricted data may refer to regulated information or other mission-critical data that require the highest level of protection.

By understanding the full scope of your data landscape and its associated risk levels, you can then prioritize your security efforts and allocation of resources.

Data Access Controls

Controlling who has access to sensitive data is a cornerstone of any robust data security program. Conducting a comprehensive review of your identity and access management (IAM) policies and controls is recommended. This includes evaluating user roles and permissions, as well as implementing the principle of least privilege to ensure that individuals only have the minimum access required to perform their job functions.

The 2024 DBIR highlights the importance of strong access controls, noting that compromised credentials were a factor in 29% of data breach incidents. Organizations should consider implementing multi-factor authentication, privileged access management, and other advanced IAM strategies to mitigate the risk of credential-based attacks.  Pay special attention to local accounts tied to SaaS, PaaS and other cloud services.

It's also crucial to regularly review and update access controls as user roles and responsibilities change within the organization. Establishing a robust process for managing access lifecycles can help prevent orphaned accounts and unauthorized access.

Data Security Monitoring

Even with comprehensive data discovery and access controls in place, organizations must be vigilant in monitoring for suspicious activity and potential data breaches. Deploying a robust data security monitoring solution that can detect and alert on anomalous behavior, such as unusual file access patterns, unauthorized data transfers, or suspicious user activities is also recommended.

The 2024 DBIR emphasizes the importance of timely detection and response, noting that the median time to discover a data breach was 21 days, while the median time to contain the breach was an additional 11 days. Organizations that can quickly identify and mitigate security incidents are significantly better positioned to minimize the impact and cost of a breach.

In addition to technical monitoring capabilities, the need for regular security awareness training and incident response planning is critical. Employees should be educated on data security best practices and empowered to report suspicious activity, while your organization should have a well-rehearsed plan for responding to and recovering from a data breach or other security incident.

Benchmarking Your Data Security Posture

By leveraging the insights from the 2024 Verizon DBIR and the data security benchmarking framework, organizations can assess their current data security posture and identify areas for improvement. This process typically involves the following steps:

1. Establish baseline metrics: Gather data on your current data security controls, policies, and practices, as well as any past security incidents or breaches.

2. Compare to industry standards: Analyze your baseline data metrics against the findings and recommendations from the Verizon DBIR and NISTs CSF.

3. Identify gaps and priorities: Pinpoint areas where your organization's data security measures fall short of industry benchmarks, and prioritize these areas for improvement.

4. Develop an action plan: Create a comprehensive strategy for addressing the identified gaps, including specific initiatives, timelines, and resource requirements.  Establish and quantify your baseline and minimum control objectives.

5. Implement and monitor: Execute your data security improvement plan, and regularly assess your progress against your established metrics and benchmarks.

By engaging in this data security benchmarking process, organizations can gain a clearer understanding of their cybersecurity posture, make informed decisions about where to focus their efforts, and ultimately enhance their overall resilience against evolving threats.

Conclusion

In today's rapidly changing threat landscape, data security benchmarking is a critical practice for organizations of all sizes and industries. By aligning your security controls, policies, and practices with industry standards and best practices, you can better protect your most valuable assets and mitigate the risk of costly data breaches.

Leveraging the insights from the Verizon DBIR and NISTs data security benchmarking framework, you can assess your current security posture, identify areas for improvement, and develop a comprehensive action plan to strengthen your data protection measures. Investing in this process can not only help you safeguard your organization's sensitive information, but also enhance your overall business resilience and competitive advantage in the digital age.