What is Data Security (pdf)?

Data Security introduction:

Data Security is necessary for the existence of many organizations and for all kinds of online services. In recent years, computer technology has become available to everybody at a very cheap cost. Also, specialized software packages are producing all kinds of solutions at a very low price. The result of all the advancements in technology and its affordability has made it possible to use computers in all fields of life. The Internet has connected millions of computers and people together and it has made possible the e-commerce, m-commerce, etc. Now you can purchase books, clothes, and all kinds of stuff online, by using credit cards. In today's world, online markets are available for all kinds of shopping like software, hardware,  electronics, medical equipment, etc.

Data security definition:

All the advances in data manipulation have given birth to a new issue known as

Data Security.

Data Security Explanation:

The organization obtaining the data of any kind is responsible for the security of data and will be liable to prosecution for the lapses in the security of data and updating it not properly. You can use the internet to connect to a network in any part of the world and see any data on that network. Today many organizations heavily depend upon fast computer processing and if someone enters their network and makes it unavailable, the working of the entire organization will halt. Many organizations store data of their customers online for providing fast services.

Data Security Example:

A credit card company may put data of its every customer online. A bank providing online services will be using online data storage for the records of every person. A university may provide the facility of viewing results online of each and every board class. People take online exams like GRE, GAT, etc.

Data Security Violations:

The following are some of the ways in which the security of data may be violated.

• Someone may break into the computer room and take away all storage devices housing sensitive data illegally.
• Unauthorized users may take access to personal data of someone and then it to gain some advantage. For example: if someone gets access to your credit card number then he can use it to do online shopping from your account that will give u many losses.it may be dangerous for u.
• An unauthorized user may use an online mail server, like mail.yahoo.com to view the email message of the users hence causing privacy issues.
• Someone can send a computer network virus onto a network causing the network to become very slow or even unusable many times.
• Some users may gain unauthorized access to bank accounts to reach their security data. and transfer a large amount of money from one account to another account to his personal account.
• A person may make a computer so busy by sending or receiving many requests so that the computer becomes unavailable to authorized users processing. This is called a denial of services situation.

Security Threats:

The following are the main threats to Data Security:

• Some authorized users of the data may unintentionally delete or change sensitive data.
• Another solution to these types of problems is that proper password protection of any kind of data should be used to use any resource. A long life should also be maintained to keep track of all the activities on the data/files.
• Some strong encryption algorithms should be used so that if someone gets access to the data, he/she should not be able to make any sense out of it.
• The solution to infected data is that proper computer virus scanning software should be used to scan all data coming or going into the organization.
• Computers network and all backing storage devices should be placed in locked rooms with only authorized access to these resources for processing.
• Authorized users must be asked to change their passwords periodically from someone. Very short and common passwords should be avoided or neglect.

Data Protection:

Many organizations gathered data about their employee customers. Some of this data is needed for efficiently processing business transactions. For example, a hospital having data about any disease history of all patients. All the personal data kept by different organizations may be disclosed by the organizations for some legal purposes. For example in the hospital case, medical researches may use the patient personal data, like his medical history, or any other fields to draw some conclusions. But if the hospital management distributes that data somewhere, then this may make the patient feel embarrassment and shameful e.g. in a case when the patients have some mental disorder or have a bad history. The data protection rules refer to such a case, it means that any personal data kept by some organization should never be disclosed o unauthorized persons/ organization under any circumstances.

Privacy Issue:

An individual has a right to see the complete collection of data kept about him. For this, he has the right to submit an application to view that data at any time.

he also has the right to stop the processing of this data by the organization. He also has a right to claim compensation from the organization for any kind of disclosure of data disallowed by the law.

No worker of the organization is allowed to disclose or use the data kept by its own organization and if he fails to abide by, he is committing a crime.

It is clear from this discussion that the data protection act tries to minimize the misuse of personal information to provide a safeguard against such crime. Also, an organization collecting data should collect only the data adequate necessary for its working and should not collect un-unnecessary data. 

The following points should be considered to ensure individuals' privacy.

• The organization is responsible for keeping the data updated and unique.
• The organization should keep data for the specified periods of time only and cannon keep it longer than necessary.
• At no point during the processing of any kind of data , the rights of the subject should be violated and wasted.
• The organization was irresponsible for all kinds of security of data.