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Four encrypted cloud services for your business  

Businesses of all sizes depend on cloud services to better manage their files and data. Different platforms provide various degrees of security, so data stored in the cloud might not be as secure as you think.

In fact, 70% of organizations that store data with major cloud vendors were hacked or experienced a data leak in 2020. The risk is even more significant for multi-cloud enterprises, who reported twice as many security incidents as organizations utilizing a single platform.

Encrypted cloud services offer an additional layer of protection against cyber threats and data breaches. This enables companies like yours to leverage the benefits of cloud connectivity without putting sensitive information at risk.

In this article, we explore the factors that make encrypted cloud services essential for your business and review four services including WinZip Enterprise® that keep your information safe.

Why encrypted services are key to cybersecurity

Almost all cloud services offer some form of encryption. It is up to you as the customer to ensure you understand a particular provider’s policies and procedures for encryption and encryption key management.

If your cloud provider fails to comply with federal, state, and local cloud security standards, laws, and regulations it can result in a multitude of negative ramifications. This may include penalties, fines, legal disputes, and other challenges that could be quite devasting to your business.

The encryption key is what codes (encrypts) and decodes (decrypts) the data. Without the correct key, you cannot transform ciphertext back into readable plain text. The average enterprise could have hundreds or thousands of encryption keys, each of which must be protected against unauthorized access and loss.

Most cloud services—91%—do not encrypt data at rest. If the provider experiences a breach, your organization’s data could be compromised. This is why it’s important to understand what protections your service providers have in place, including safeguards for data, whether it is in transit or at rest.

Today, more than 60% of corporate data is stored in the cloud. Cloud storage enables users to access data from anywhere—all they need is a network connection and authorization to access the files.

Without encryption, these cybercriminals can easily intercept your sensitive and confidential information. Once they have access to customer data, personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property (IP), and other types of unencrypted cloud data, they can leverage it for financial gain, to commit fraud, or cause other types of harm.

Experiencing a data breach when valuable information is unencrypted can be devasting for businesses of all sizes. In addition to the costs involved in recovering lost data, there are additional factors that can negatively impact your organization’s bottom line. These factors can be classed into two broad categories:

  • Direct costs. Costs associated with responding to cybersecurity events are considered direct costs. Examples include operational disruption, regulatory fines, investigation costs, and settlements or reimbursements to affected parties.

  • Indirect costs. The resources spent recovering from a data breach are indirect costs. Examples include operational downtime, loss of customers’ confidence, reputational damage, and stagnated business growth.. Examples include operational downtime, loss of customers’ confidence, reputational damage, and stagnated business growth.

The benefits of encrypted cloud services

As companies adopt cloud services, the complexity of their data infrastructure increases, and the attack surface grows. Data exposure is the second-most common issue with cloud security, and encryption is key to safeguarding sensitive data in the event of a breach.

Various laws and regulations govern how businesses must protect sensitive information. However, these often do not apply to cloud service providers. For example, your service provider might not be subject to the same disclosure requirements in the event of a data breach. This is because your organization owns the data, which makes you legally responsible for the breach even if it is caused by the cloud service provider.

Fortunately, these data breach disclosure requirements also tend to include a safe harbor clause. This is a legal provision that removes the disclosure requirement so long as the stolen data is undecipherable to whoever steals it. As long as you have appropriate safety measures in place, such as encryption, your organization is protected from data breach litigation.

Leveraging encrypted cloud services for your business yields the following benefits:

Encrypted cloud services—four Examples

Encrypted cloud services come in all shapes and sizes. The best options for your business should have certain key features and functionalities, such as:

  • Compatibility with major cloud platforms. When choosing an encryption service, it is important to be able to manage and share files across the cloud environments in use at your organization.

  • Secure collaboration. Encrypted cloud services should enable faster, better workflows and equip teams to work collaboratively. With built-in layers of protection, you can share and collaborate on files without compromising sensitive data.

  • Multiple encryption layers. Different cloud services offer different degrees of encryption and security. Some only have one encryption layer, while others are customizable to your unique business needs.

Here is a list of four encrypted cloud services for your business:

1. Boxcryptor

Boxcryptor provides end-to-end encryption and is compatible with over 30 public cloud providers. It links to your local folders or cloud storage service and encrypts all the data within. Boxcryptor sets up a virtual drive within your file explorer, which is where you will find your encrypted data.

There is no option to filter or exclude certain file types, which means all files are automatically encrypted and decrypted. You must be logged in to your Boxcryptor account to decrypt and access data.

To enable file sharing, the recipient must also have a Boxcryptor account. Otherwise, you can use the solution’s Whisply integration to create customizable sharing links that are compatible with OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

2. NordLocker

NordLocker leverages private cloud technology for its file encryption services. It does not offer direct integration with any cloud storage platform, which means you must set up the storage service on your device.

Encrypted data is stored in folders, which are called lockers. These lockers can reside on your local device or the NordLocker cloud. Anything stored in a NordLocker cloud is automatically synced with all your other NordLocker installations across your devices.

You can share folders (lockers) stored on your device, but you cannot share ones that are stored in the cloud. The recipient must also have a NordLocker account to access the shared files.

3. IDrive

IDrive gives you the ability to create your own encryption keys, giving you total control over your organization’s data security. Using and managing private key encryption requires additional technical expertise, which is why you can also use IDrive’s default encryption generation.

To utilize file sharing, you must select the default encryption option; you cannot share files protected by private encryption. IDrive offers a combination of cloud storage and backup functionalities, and all devices can be backed up into a single IDrive account.

IDrive does not delete data from backups, acting as a true archiving solution that keeps all backed up files in your IDrive account. Data stored in IDrive is protected using 256-bit AES encryption.

4. WinZip Enterprise

WinZip Enterprise® gives larger organizations military-grade data encryption, management, sharing, and compression within a single, customizable solution. It secures your company’s files in transit and at rest using 128- and 256-bit AES encryption, which means that you can customize your data protection level to match your industry’s unique requirements.

As a Windows Information Protection (WIP) enlightened solution, WinZip Enterprise gives IT admins the ability to separate business and personal data, as well as determine which users and applications can access specific datasets.

By finding and flagging duplicate files, WinZip Enterprise also helps organizations save thousands of dollars in data storage and management fees. It natively integrates with leading cloud storage providers, ensuring secure file management on any storage platform. WinZip Enterprise also enables teams to access internal and external files using its file zipping and unzipping capabilities.

WinZip Enterprise enables businesses to protect critical data, enforce protocols, and empower teams to collaborate on one centralized platform, simplifying operations. With WinZip Enterprise, organizations will be able to boost their productivity rates and optimize daily workflows, while keeping sensitive information secure.

Find out how WinZip Enterprise can protect your business’s privacy in the cloud.

What is Data Anonymization?  

Data anonymization protects privacy by encoding or deleting private or sensitive information within a database. This process safeguards personal data against unauthorized use or disclosure via cyber-attacks or other security breaches.

A single data breach can impact the personal data of hundreds to millions of people. For example, a Michigan-based bank experienced a data breach in June 2022 that compromised the social security numbers of 1.5 million customers. In that same month, a Massachusetts healthcare group also reported a breach in which hackers stole records containing names, social security numbers, and other sensitive information of up to 2 million people.

If a dataset contains private or sensitive information, anonymization techniques render such information anonymous so that it cannot be linked back to individuals. Data anonymization is also known as data masking or obfuscation.

Anonymized data can be used in a variety of applications, such as test data for quality assurance (QA), development, and training purposes outside the production environment. It also preserves private or confidential information within datasets that are stored or shared with third parties.

There are many types of sensitive information that need protection:

  • Personally identifiable information (PII). Any data that could be linked to a specific person is considered PII. Examples include full names, addresses, social security numbers, fingerprints, and dates of birth.

  • Protected health information (PHI). When used as research data, PHI must be anonymized before it can be released. Medical histories, insurance information, and lab results are just a few examples of PHI.

  • Payment card information (PCI). The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) requires organizations to protect cardholder data from unauthorized exposure. Examples of PCI data include the cardholder’s name, PIN, and Primary Account Number (PAN).

  • Intellectual property (IP). IP refers to something created through creativity, brainpower, and skilled work. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are all examples of intellectual property.

For example, a dataset describing the buying habits of shoppers based on age range does not need to include participant’s name or exact age. Likewise, PII is not necessary to train effective AI systems, so it should be scrubbed from the data to avoid unintended disclosures.

In this article, we will explore various data anonymization techniques and best practices. We will also look at what differentiates data de-identification from data anonymization for business security and how tools like WinZip® Enterprise help protect enterprise data with data anonymization.

Data anonymization techniques

There are several ways to remove identifiable information from a dataset. The technique that will work best depends on the associated use case.

For example, some data anonymization techniques are best suited to test data management, while others are appropriate when sharing data with third parties.

Enterprise organizations create, share, and store a large volume of diverse data, so it is impractical to use a single anonymization technique across all datasets.

There are two primary approaches to anonymization: randomization and generalization. Data generalization dilutes individual attributes by modifying the scale or order of magnitude. Randomization techniques change the dataset’s attributes to remove links between data and individuals.

Here are the various ways you can anonymize data through randomization and generalization:

  • Substitution. Data substitution masks the original information by replacing it with another value. For example, you can mask customer names with a random lookup file that preserves the data’s original look and feel.

  • Shuffling. The shuffling method randomly shuffles data within an attribute or set of attributes. For example, you could shuffle employee names across multiple employee records to eliminate the links between data columns and hide personal information.

  • Number and date variance. The number and date variance technique randomizes each value in a column so that it cannot be traced back to its original form. For example, you can apply a variance of +/- 10% to monthly sales figures or employee salaries.

  • Scrambling. Scrambling characters and numbers hide the original content and protects personally identifiable data. For example, you can scramble account numbers to maintain the appearance of accurate data, such as changing #85241 to #42815.

  • Masking out. To share data with unauthorized users, businesses mask out parts of the original data using random characters or other data. Masking credit card data to only show the last four digits is a common example of this technique.

  • Nulling out. A null value can be used to replace sensitive information, ensuring that unauthorized users cannot see actual data. For example, nulling out middle names in a dataset reduces the risk of individual identification.

Anonymized data vs. de-identification

Data de-identification is the process of removing identifying information from a dataset. Anonymized data is free of any identifiable information as well as all quasi-identifiable information that, if combined with other data, could be used to re-identify an individual.

While both de-identification and anonymization remove direct and quasi-identifiers, de-identified data can be reconnected to the original information. With anonymized data, however, there is no way to link it back to identifiable information.

It is important to understand the subtle differences between de-identification and anonymization for compliance with various data privacy regulations. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has three criteria for anonymization techniques.

  • Individualization. Any data that can provide context to single out an individual within a dataset must be anonymized. For example, if a dataset contains the height of various individuals and only one person is 4’10”, that individual is singled out because it is a unique value.

  • Correlation. Linking quasi-identifiers from separate sources makes it easy for bad actors to identify an individual. For example, demographic studies suggest that around 87% of the US population is identifiable using just three attributes—gender, date of birth, and ZIP code.

  • Inference. Inference is the ability to guess or estimate the value of an attribute using other available information. For example, a dataset with statistics on levels of seniority and salaries within a department does not directly identify individuals, but inferences can be drawn between the two pieces of information, allowing an individual to be identified.

An appropriate anonymization solution should prevent the individualization, correlation, and inference of data that would allow an individual to be traced within the dataset.

GDPR requirements for anonymization are stricter than similar data privacy provisions. For example, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) requires companies to make reasonable efforts to remove identifying data, while GDPR requires that identifiable information is irreversibly prevented from use.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) includes how data can be stored, used, and shared. To use health data in research and assessments, it must be de-identified to reduce privacy risks to individuals. HIPAA-compliant de-identification does not remove the risk of individual identification entirely, which means that it is not the same as data anonymization.

Best practices to keep data safe

With both the number and type of cyberattacks increasing, it is more important than ever to protect private, sensitive, and confidential information. In 2021, the average total cost of a data breach was $4.24 million, a 10% increase from 2020. Personal and sensitive information were included in 44% of breaches, costing companies an average of $180 per lost or stolen record.

Protecting private information starts by assessing and classifying all your organizational data. Classify data according to its sensitivity so that you can apply the most appropriate data anonymization technique.

Data security is never a one-and-done process. It is important to regularly re-evaluate databases to identify new risks and assess the performance of the controls, policies, and procedures meant to protect data.

Also consider whether a linkage attack could connect any other datasets with the anonymized data. For example, an anonymized dataset containing the gender, date of birth, and postal code of individuals could be cross-referenced with a public voter registry which contains the same information but also includes the individuals’ names.

How WinZip Enterprise helps you keep data anonymous

Data anonymization and encryption are effective, powerful methods of protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access. Encryption transforms data into a coded format using encryption algorithms. The data is unintelligible unless the end user has the cryptographic key needed to decrypt the information.

While data anonymization is used for datasets that are in active use, encryption protects data in-transit and at-rest. By leveraging both encryption and data anonymization techniques, organizations enable comprehensive protection against unauthorized access and use of personal and sensitive information.

WinZip Enterprise is a comprehensive solution for safeguarding critical data. It features a complete set of enterprise-grade tools for unsurpassed protection everywhere your data resides.

Centralized IT controls make it easy to customize WinZip Enterprise to your specific needs, such as removing unnecessary features and setting and enforcing company-wide security policies.

Explore how WinZip Enterprise can help companies preserve private or confidential information through data anonymization.

How to encrypt zip files with WinZip Enterprise

Encryption adds an additional layer of protection for sensitive or confidential information. When storing or transmitting data files over networks, encryption prevents unauthorized access by malicious actors.

Using complex algorithms, encryption scrambles information into an undecipherable format known as cyphertext. Without the correct key, the encrypted data cannot be transformed back into readable plaintext.

Encryption is an important security measure for all your digital content, including Zip files. Zip is an archive file format that can compress one or more files and/or folders into a single, smaller file. In addition to saving disk space, some compression tools also encrypt data at the file level, enhancing your data protection strategies.

In this article, we will look at the benefits and uses of encryption for Zip files and detail the ste

ps for encrypting your Zip files with WinZip® Enterprise.

Why you need to encrypt zip files for your business

Zip files can store hundreds of files and folders in a single location. When you encrypt a Zip file, its contents are locked down and accessible only to specific, authorized users. Zip files reduce file size through lossless compression, which removes data redundancies without impacting the overall file quality.

Reducing the file size also increases transfer and download speeds. Compressed Zip files transmit in one-tenth of the time of their uncompressed counterparts. Once the recipient downloads the encrypted Zip file, they can decompress the contents back to their original state without degrading the data quality.

During the time it takes to email a file or upload it to the cloud, cybercriminals could potentially intercept and steal the data. An encrypted Zip file, however, is useless to malicious actors because they cannot decrypt the contents.

Encrypted Zip files are especially useful when your files contain sensitive information, such as:

  • Legal documents
  • Financial records and information
  • Archive data
  • Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
  • Protected health information (PHI)
  • Trade secrets, copyrights, and intellectual property

Often, this type of data is held to specific regulations or industry standards. You must maintain compliance with applicable provisions to ensure that the information is secured against loss, misuse, theft, and corruption. Compliance regulations include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Companies in the healthcare industry use security protocols—including encryption—to meet HIPAA requirements for the protection of sensitive health data.

  • System and Organization Controls (SOC). Organizations that store customer data in the cloud are subject to SOC standards. Encryption falls under the confidentiality service principle of SOC and is a best practice for protecting sensitive financial information.

  • Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). If your business handles cardholder data, following PCI DSS best practices can help minimize the risk of a data breach. One such practice is encryption of data file transmissions.

  • California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Any company that collects the personal data of California residents is subject to CCPA. To mitigate risk, data must be encrypted when it is at rest or in transit.

  • General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR safeguards the privacy of EU citizens. Encryption is explicitly mentioned throughout the GDPR as a preferred method of protecting consumer data and managing the risks associated with transferring data.

Benefits of zip file encryption

According to industry reports, around 7 million unencrypted data files are compromised daily. When you consider the fact that 60% of organizations transfer sensitive files to and from the cloud regardless of their encryption status, it’s no wonder these files are being compromised by malicious third parties.

Advanced encryption algorithms—such as 128- and 256-bit AES encryption—are virtually impossible to crack. This is due to the length of AES keys, which would require significant time and effort to overcome in a brute force attack.

In a brute force attack, the hacker tries every possible arrangement of letters, characters, and words until they find one that works. A 256-bit AES key has 2256 possible combinations, or

There is a 1 in over 115 quattuorvigintillion chance of finding the correct combination in a 256-bit AES
key.

Any attempts to obtain the key using brute-force trial and error would be infeasible. The same logic applies to AES-128, which has 2128 potential combinations. It would take around a billion years for a malicious actor to brute force their way to unlocking a 128-bit encryption key.

When you encrypt enterprise Zip files, you also make it easier to transmit large quantities of information. Compressed files take up less storage space than uncompressed files. For example, word-based documents can be compressed to around 90% of their original size.

By reducing overall file size while preserving the original data quality, encrypted Zip files help you avoid issues such as server timeouts. This reduces the amount of time spent waiting for files to upload or download, enhancing your overall productivity.

Encrypt zip files with WinZip Enterprise

WinZip Enterprise is a comprehensive solution for data encryption, management, sharing, and compression. Using FIPS 140-2 compliant secure AES encryption, WinZip Enterprise secures your files when they are in transit and at rest.

Follow these seven steps to encrypt your Zip files and safeguard your sensitive, private, and confidential information.

  1. Open WinZip Enterprise. In the Files pane, locate and select the file(s) you wish to add to a Zip file. Click Add to Zip.

  2. In the Actions pane, select Save As to store your Zip file in your preferred location.

  3. In the Actions pane, click Encrypt.

  4. Drag and drop the file(s) to the NewZip.zip pane that appears in the center of the screen.

  5. When the dialog box opens, enter a secure password. Click OK.

  6. In the Actions pane, click Options. Then, select Encryption Settings.

  7. Select the level of encryption (128-bit AES or 256-bit AES). Click Save.

Highly secure, customizable, and easy to use, WinZip Enterprise enhances your overall data security measures. It also syncs with leading cloud storage providers, including Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Box, and more. This enables companies like yours to zip, encrypt, and securely share files using unique, expiration-driven links directly from WinZip Enterprise.

Learn more about WinZip Enterprise’s encryption features for Zip files.

Secure exchange: what it is and why it’s important for your business 

It is important to make security a priority when your business data goes through the internet.

Data breaches in the healthcare industry are on the rise. In the first five months of 2022, the number of reported breaches was twice the amount compared to the same time period in 2021.

Experiencing data breaches devalues the integrity of any organization, but leaks of unprotected personal health information affects individuals too. Health information is valued on the black market at about $250 per record.

Encryption is a key component of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) because it can help prevent breaches. In the event of a data leak, if the protected health information (PHI) is secured through encryption and the key remains secure, then it does not have to be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The encrypted information is considered unusable to unauthorized parties and therefore only the data leak itself warrants action. Therefore, encryption is a key resource for organizations subject to HIPAA and other data privacy regulations.

For these reasons, electronic health information exchange must be secure. In this article, we will explore what secure exchange is, why it’s important, and how to use tools like WinZip® Enterprise to protect your organization’s sensitive and confidential data.

What is secure exchange?

The secure exchange of protected health information is regulated to ensure patient privacy and information availability and enables healthcare providers to retrieve their patient’s data quickly.

Three primary forms of secure exchange exist:

  • Directed exchange. Directed exchange of patient information happens between healthcare providers and has a specific sender and receiver. Healthcare providers may transfer information via direct secure email, fax, text, and phone calls. These avenues of communication are not HIPAA compliant by default, so IT administrators will need to determine an appropriate service to ensure security.
  • Query-based exchange. Query-based exchange typically happens when unplanned care occurs and a receiver is requesting information from many potential senders. Healthcare providers request PHI from organizations and receive it securely to deliver the best care.
  • Consumer mediated exchange. Consumer mediated exchange is a form of exchange where the patient receives their own information from healthcare providers for purposes such as correcting mistakes, distributing it to other providers, and the tracking of health and billing information.

HIPAA requirements for businesses

Electronic health information exchange (HIE) helps healthcare providers access and share patient medical data electronically. This ensures that medical professionals have a more complete patient record to work with and facilitates timely sharing of important information.

HIE also plays an important role in standardizing patient data. It improves patient care because the individual’s electronic health record (EHR) will contain all relevant clinical information needed to improve evidence-based decision making and other care-related activities.

To ensure that the privacy and security of patient data is maintained at all times, healthcare organizations must follow certain state and federal regulations, such as HIPAA and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA). When it comes to HIPAA requirements for secure exchange, businesses must comply with safeguards contained within the Privacy Rule and Security Rule.

The Privacy Rule addresses the following:

  • Conditions under which PHI may be used or disclosed without direct
    authorization from an individual.
  • What security measures must be taken to protect PHI.
  • How individuals may direct their healthcare providers to disclose information to other covered entities—organizations which are subject to the Security Rule.

The Security Rule specifies how electronic PHI (ePHI) covered by the Privacy Rule is to be safeguarded against threats to privacy, integrity, and availability. It contains required measures that must be taken by businesses as well as addressable implementations that enable businesses to take reasonable safeguards of their choosing instead. For example, encryption is an addressable issue which businesses must handle themselves or through a third party.

Examples of PHI are name, contact information, address, social security number (SSN), and information related to payments for healthcare. Any disclosure or impermissible use of unsecured health information is considered a breach.

Potential outcomes of HIPAA noncompliance may come from your employer, such as termination, or extend as far as criminal charges—namely fines and imprisonment—as well as being sanctioned from professional boards.

The HHS requires HIPAA compliance from covered organizations and any business associates they engage that involves the use of PHI. Business associates may include accountants, consultants, and technical support roles. For example, IT professionals brought on to secure cloud services for ePHI storage are associates of the covered organization.

Some of the HIPAA requirements for businesses include:

  1. Privacy procedures. Appropriate standards consistent with the Privacy Rule must be made and enforced by covered entities. The Security Rule applies to ePHI, which your company creates, receives, maintains, and transmits, and must therefore be secured. Any form of ePHI is required to be protected through appropriate data safeguards such as encryption, strict access controls, and backups.

    Additionally, a chief privacy officer (CPO) must be appointed to oversee a privacy oversight committee which will aid in enforcing compliance. Part of the committee’s responsibilities will be training employees in HIPAA compliance when they are brought into a role that involves PHI, or when risk assessment demonstrates a need for corrective training.

  2. Risk analysis. Covered entities are responsible for annual risk analysis, which is defined as “an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information held by the [organization].”

    The HHS categorizes some potential threats to information systems containing ePHI as human, natural, and environmental. Examples include the uploading of malicious software to information systems, natural disasters, and long-term power outages which render ePHI inaccessible, respectively.

  3. Breach Notification Rule. This rule requires covered entities to report any breach of unprotected PHI to the individuals it affects, to the HHS, and potentially to the media. When 500 or more individuals of a state or jurisdiction are affected, notices of the breach are not to be delayed unreasonably, must be distributed to the local media, and must be submitted within 60 days of discovery.

    When fewer than 500 individuals are affected, the media does not need to be notified, and reporting the incident to the HHS may be submitted as late as 60 days after the end of the calendar year in which it occurred. It is important to note that the burden of proof for every mandatory notification of breached PHI lies with the covered entities and applicable business associates.

  4. Omnibus rule. Business associates are fully liable for HIPAA noncompliance, including resulting fines. A situation where business owners may still be fined for an associate’s noncompliance occurs when the covered entity cannot disprove willful negligence to HHS. The Omnibus rule resulted in the new standards found in other sections, such as the current rules regarding breach notification.

Why secure exchange is important

Health information is personal, so data breaches leaking that information to malicious parties can result in harm to the individuals whose PHI was exposed.

PHI is valuable in underground markets because it has a long shelf life. Individuals are unlikely to know about the data breach until it is detected and reported by the responsible organization.

When credit card information is stolen, typically the card is cancelled and the charge is reported as fraudulent, but PHI does not have the same luxury. Victims of data leaks cannot cancel their medical history and get a new one.

Potential abuse of stolen information includes receiving medical treatment using the victim’s identity, filling the victim’s prescriptions, and issuing fake medical claims.

Implementing secure electronic health information exchanges opens your organization to the following benefits:

  • Enhanced efficiency. Secure exchange allows relevant PHI access to healthcare providers, eliminating the need for patients to fill out medical history paperwork at new facilities.

  • Lowered cost. Electronic health information exchange promotes interoperability, which can reduce healthcare provider’s administrative and care costs by $30 billion.

  • Optimized treatment. Interoperability of PHI between healthcare providers enables better prediction of patient needs and coordination of health and billing plans.

  • Streamlined workflows. Physicians can use patient’s real-time data to prevent duplicate testing and procedures, especially in care partnerships, promoting efficient treatment.

  • Reduced errors. Standardized HIE means physicians always know where to find relevant medical information for patients, such as the timing and dosage of administered medication.

  • Improved health monitoring. Patients and healthcare providers have the means to view a comprehensive medical history, which can be used to better understand the patient’s health.

How WinZip Enterprise facilitates secure exchange

Need ironclad security to be HIPAA compliant? WinZip Enterprise offers leading encryption tools that feature customization of encryption standards, backup schedules, and centralized IT control.

Military-grade FIPS 140-2 validated AES encryption with customizable key size keeps important data safe in-transit and at-rest. With WinZip Enterprise’s integration of Windows Information Protection (WIP) and deployment and enforcement of security policies, everyone remains HIPAA compliant.

Staying HIPAA compliant can be strenuous, but the tools that make it possible do not have to be. Transferring unprotected PHI is no hassle with WinZip Enterprise secure enterprise file transfer, as it keeps your files encrypted and safe from unauthorized parties and data loss.

Discover how WinZip Enterprise can help companies like yours stay HIPAA compliant.

Why Is Data Security So Important for Enterprises? 

Data security is a rising issue according to 68% of business leaders.

In 2021, there were 68% more data breaches than in 2020. In the first quarter of 2022, there were 14% more breaches than Q1 2021.

Enterprises are experiencing significant setbacks due to these breaches with 10% paying $1,000,000 or more in ransoms tied to data security breaches yearly.

Data breaches detract from a business’s bottom line. Revenue loss, a damaged reputation, fines for private data leakage—all of those and more can happen when your data is not sufficiently protected.

Despite being a top priority for enterprises, it takes an average of 212 days to detect a data breach and an additional 75 days to contain it. As in many cases, prevention is better than a cure when it comes to data security.

In this article, we will explore what data security is, the countermeasures taken against attack vectors, and why it is important for your business to be covered in all avenues of defense. We will also identify how to utilize data security tools such as WinZip® Enterprise that help prevent data breaches by securing sensitive files.

What Is Data Security and What Does It Protect You From?

The process of providing security throughout an organization to protect against data loss and prevent unauthorized access to data repositories is the core of enterprise data security.

Security procedures should be viewed holistically because they are only as strong as their weakest link. A business that is a bastion of cyber defenses can still have its hard drives stolen; a datacenter under lock and key still must secure its network transmissions against interception.

Attack vectors for cyber security breaches and their associated countermeasures come in many forms, many of which overlap and influence each other. They include the following:

  • Phishing. Over one-third of data breaches involve phishing, which is a form of fraud where a bad actor presents themselves as a reputable individual for the purpose of distributing malicious material that could cause breaches. Links and email attachments can be used to trick victims into distributing private information or installing malware, spyware, or ransomware.

    Preventative tools such as email filtering help by recognizing fake domains and flagging the message as suspicious.

  • Unauthorized access. This type of breach occurs when an authorized user’s login information is exposed through means such as phishing or clever guesswork because the password is too weak.

    Breaches caused by hacking are attributed to leveraged credentials 61% of the time. Multi-factor authentification (MFA), an additional layer of verification, helps prevent compromised logins from causing breaches.

  • Negligence. Misconfigured and outdated functionalities that have not been maintained can open the door for cybercriminals who know what to look for. For example, running outdated software with known exploits can be used as initial attack vectors, unsecured public-facing applications could be used to find private information or phish users with fake redirects, and unencrypted connections may allow for data interception.

    Keeping your software up to date, restricting redirects in your production environment except for those that are whitelisted, and using a virtual private network (VPN) to secure your network connections are just a few solutions for security issues caused by negligence.

  • Physical theft.Unencrypted files offer no protection from criminals capable of stealing your laptop, phone, or hard drives. This includes unencrypted data backups, which could be compromised in many of the same ways as actively used data.

    Encrypting your sensitive data reduces risk in the event of a physical breach, yet 53% of companies have over 1,000 sensitive files unencrypted and accessible by all their employees. It is also prudent to employ some degree of physical security to prevent criminals from stealing hardware or information from key locations, such as wiring compartments, server rooms, and data storage locations.

How Data Breaches Affect Your Enterprise

Trust and respect are the currency that companies pay with when security breaches happen. After a breach occurs, 83% of consumers claim they will discontinue transactions at the affected business for several months. Those that will never return account for 21% of consumers.

Sensitive files on the cloud are left unencrypted by 83% of organizations, which offers no mitigation against breaches or data leaks. Clouds are breached at a rate of 70% per year, often due to stolen login information.

Compromised credentials are responsible for 20% of breaches, yet only 57% of businesses worldwide employ basic precautions such as MFA.

The average cost of a typical data breach among all organizations was $4.24 million in 2021. Companies do not fully recover once the breach is contained, however, as they underperform on the stock market by 15% for as long as three years after a public data security failure.

It bears remembering that security is not just protection from malicious actors, but also defense against operational disruption and downtime. Regular data backups are instrumental in maintaining data availability.

Data loss can be catastrophic for businesses and is not impossible when data breaches occur, especially when ransomware is involved. Companies that experienced severe data loss do not recover 94% of the time.

For these reasons, a strong and consistent approach to all aspects of data security is of incredible importance for enterprises.

WinZip Enterprise Enables Enterprise Data Security

Enterprises must manage data security across many different repositories simultaneously. To protect your organization’s data in-transit and at-rest, WinZip Enterprise offers secure backup, encryption, and file transfer features.

This solution offers many encryption methods, including backups encoded with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128-bit or 256-bit keys. This enables you to customize protection levels based on your company’s needs.

File sharing, backups, and security policies are easily implemented and enforced thanks to WinZip Enterprise’s centralized and customizable IT controls. WinZip Enterprise uses Windows Information Protection (WIP) to enable IT professionals to customize their security policies to keep users and their sensitive information secure.

Compliance with the military-grade encryption standard FIPS means government agencies and businesses looking for a high degree of security can protect themselves from hackers and cybercriminals.

Although the tools used to protect data are complex, users will not have to strain themselves to encrypt their files with WinZip Enterprise. Simply choose the preferred level of encryption, create a password, and your business’s files will be protected.

Discover how WinZip Enterprise can help simplify data security and protect your company’s sensitive information.

Learn more about WinZip Enterprise today!

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