With today's prevalence of mobile devices, data security has no physical boundaries. At a time where an entire hard drive can be downloaded to a smart phone or thumb drive in a matter of minutes, perimeter defenses such as firewalls and virtual private networks (VPNs) are no longer enough.
Obviously, this is a major concern for organizations around the globe. However, when it comes to the government sector, it becomes a matter of national security. Sixty percent of all confidential data resides on the endpoint, according to IDC. Moreover, with at least 50 percent of security breaches coming from within, organizations need a way to protect against more than external intruders. And with new regulations requiring that agencies report any security violations that occur, there is even more pressure to prevent any type of network breach.
But how do you balance security with the needs of users, civilian or military? In reality, workers spend a good deal of time working from home, on the road, and even on vacation. Nearly 80 percent of organizations allow their mobile workers remote access to data on corporate networks, according to a recent study by the Computing Technology Industry Association. And that opens up a whole lot of possibilities for hackers.
One of the most significant computer systems' breaches in U.S. military history happened in 2008 when malicious code contained in a flash drive infected a laptop of a military official posted in the Middle East, and spread to the network of the U.S. Central Command. The code in question was put on the drive by operatives of a foreign intelligence agency, most likely Russian.
And, as you'd expect, the Pentagon's networks are constantly being probed by foreign powers and professional, career hackers, many of whom are well aware of how to crack the code. Passive perimeters and firewalls aren't enough to keep savvy, politically driven cyber-spies at bay. That's why some government agencies are now employing an active defense strategy, which includes a significant deployment of the Absolute-ID's RocITSafe family.
Absolute-ID's RocITSafe is a hardware agnostic mobile computing platform with a zero-footprint and unbreakable encryption. It's the only solution that proactively protects data on the network from the inside out, making the data self-defending and undetectable — and eliminating the need for multiple perimeter strategies.
The RocITSafe product family, RocITStor and RocITCrypt provides a standardized method to secure information no matter where that data resides since the data actually protects itself.
RocITStor is the newest generation of unified data protection solutions for both data-at-rest and data-in-flight, providing users with a secure way to store, manage and share collaboratively with workflow partners and/or secure communities of common interest.
RocITCrypt is a centrally managed security service that provides the enterprise with the ability to provision and manage a variety of different credentials.
