Information risk management
Hi James,
I was recently requested to assess the latest release of the product your company has been developing for the last year. The analysis was in regards to the newest version of the application that was released on Thursday. I have identified that the application is prone to some risks, for example. There is no power back up or a secondary database, and the company does not take snapshots of the primary database. These gaps put the company is at risk of losing all the customer and company data in case of a power outage. The client data on the company cloud is not encrypted, making it easy for cyber attackers to access the data. The client data at rest is also exposed to different malicious threats.
To mitigate these data risks, I recommend the software developers to consider the following solutions. Therefore, this data should be encrypted to ensure that only those with encryption keys for decoding the encryption have access to the data (Diaz & Freato, 2018). This technique provides the data is protected even if attackers access the drives containing the company information. The data at rest should equally be backed up, and the backup tested to ensure it will be functional in case of the need for data recovery.
Another recommendation is the need for a power back up to ensure the applications continue operating in case of a power outage. The software developers also need to consider the need to set up a secondary database for the company information. Secondary databases consist of data derived from the analysis of primary data. This option will ensure the data can still be recovered if the primary data is lost or destroyed (Fang, Liu & Lin, 2019). It is equally essential to take snapshots of the primary to ensure data is backed up and protected. The advantage of snapshots is, the process enables the continued use of the application during the backup process.
References
Diaz, F., & Freato, R. (2018). Azure Data Lake Store and Azure Data Lake Analytics. In Cloud Data Design, Orchestration, and Management Using Microsoft Azure (pp. 327-392). Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4842-3615-4_5
Fang, J., Liu, L., & Lin, J. (2019, June). Practical Verification of Data Encryption for Cloud Storage Services. In International Conference on Services Computing (pp. 16-31). Springer, Cham.