We all know that the Internet offers numerous opportunities for emerging and established businesses. However, it also has its share of dangers and risks, which is why companies like Bitdefender continue to offer a wide range of solutions in the market to help businesses operate without running into security issues. While individuals don’t have to worry too much about these issues, as a business owner, you simply can’t afford to overlook them.
When we talk about online security, then we have to cover the subject of data encryption. This is because it’s extremely important for every business and is also a standard in the compliance frameworks designed to keep your IT systems in line. However, implementing a strategy for a business from scratch is not always easy. This is where the existing models used by the government can serve as an excellent reference.
NIST IT Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is one of the most active government-funded agencies working in the area of IT standards and compliance. It has created and still working on newer standards in science and technology sectors, mainly in the area of Format Preserving Encryption (FPE).
NIST has released a standard guide for FPE for security gurus which has overcome the shortcomings of the previously released standards. This new format can adapt data into the legacy IT environments without any problems (which was not possible with the previous standards).
FIPS Standards
The Federal Information Processing Standards(FISP) govern the IT systems of non-military and other contractual agencies. There are several FIPS standards of which FIPS 140-2 is the most prominent and most active. This is because it supports a variety of cryptographic systems and the algorithms that run on them.
FIPS 140-2 can be defined by the following encryption algorithms:
1. Triple Data Encryption Standard(3DES)
3DES was introduced as a replacement and improvement on the original Data Encryption Standard or DES. Although it is more secure than its predecessor it is also slower as it applies the encryption process 3 times.
2. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
The Advanced Encryption Standard is the most widely adopted encryption algorithm and is found to be as much as 6 times faster than the triple DES algorithm.
Making your Business Compliant
The compliance standards mentioned above are used in most of the government organizations. Thus, you can learn from them and apply them to your own business. After all, what’s good enough for a major government body should be good enough for any business as well.
The following are a few pointers on how you can use the government compliance standards for your company:
Learning about the Standards: You can refer to the series of guides on compliance and IT security released by NIST. They have discussed in detail how one can create a robust IT environment and create full virtualization.
Learning Your Business Requirements: If you are a large e-commerce business then your approach towards encryption and data security would be different than any other small business. You will need to ensure the highest security in online transactions and customer information as well. Thus, you must analyze the requirements of your own business when you start planning an encryption strategy and combine the standard practice with reliable anti-ransomware protection.
Bottom Line
In the current era, businesses have to be extremely careful with customer data due to strong data privacy laws that are enforced by governments and watchdogs across the globe. So, if you have been running your business without meeting these requirements first, then it’s about time you take care of this asap.
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