Data Analytics: The role, risks involved and solutions to secure the risk of data breaching

For most businesses, acquiring data is not the challenge, it is putting it to work. Being insight-driven means putting all that captured information into a single source to generate a comprehensive picture of how each internal and external factor is impacting the business and what should be the next course of action, considering all scenarios.

What is Data Analytics?

Often, when we think of data analytics, we think of the services offered by Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others. Unlike AI, which uses machine learning, deep learning, and predictive analytics, Data Analytics is quite different. Rather than analysing inputs to generate answers, data analytics utilizes a system of 'garbage in, garbage out to find significant insights.

How Data Analytics Can Save Your Business?

As the war for supremacy in the digital age rages on, companies around the world are battling it out for technological supremacy. Many companies are struggling to find the right balance of innovation and efficiency to drive profitability. One way to approach this challenge is by looking at their data, and how to turn data into information. Data is still an asset which companies are looking to leverage to identify their most important business priorities and make the most of their time and budget.

Investment in data analysis is at an all-time high as data makes up approximately one-third of the world’s digital data by 2021. Businesses need to deploy a strategy that delivers data intelligence to make a positive impact on the existing customers and provide insights for potential ones.

The foremost requirement for taking accurate and faster decisions is to make sense of the data you have. That means having that insight into your product, your market, and the landscape you operate in. It helps you to interpret the data in the context of your business, and thus, helps you to make the best decisions to drive growth.

Risks Involved in Data Analytics

Data is a potent fuel for businesses. Making good use of this information can help businesses grow and build a loyal customer base. If a business can optimize its data, it can increase revenue five times. However, the abundance of data does come with its share of risks and drawbacks.

Businesses that don’t put in efforts in mitigating the risks of data breaches are not doing themselves any favours. Hackers are developing technologies that will soon have undetectable backdoors into enterprise computers and can get access to raw data, applications, and databases with a few keystrokes. This will make most companies' networks less secure and open the door to potential identity theft and other fraudulent activities.

Solutions to Secure Data

Data security has always been necessary but with work from home becoming a global norm, it’s become a business priority for CIO’s. Organizations need to strengthen their infrastructure including all endpoints to avoid any cyber-attack and minimize the business impact it may have for smooth functioning.

While putting in place a security solution and making it ready for use, comes first on the list, getting employees to adopt, is perhaps the most challenging. You must make them understand the importance of data, how it can make the difference between a good business and a great business. Once this happens, all the other steps will follow accordingly.

Multi-Factor Authentication adds an extra layer of security to all your accounts. The second step usually involves an email or text message containing confirmation code, facial recognition, or fingerprint scan to authenticate data access. Secure your cloud and SAAS applications by ensuring identity and access control and encryption of data.

It is crucial to train your employees regarding phishing emails. They must stay alerted against e-mails from unknown sources and avoid opening file attachments or links in them. Make sure you encrypt sensitive information that is stored on, sent to, or sent from remote devices. Full-disk encryption of the computer's hard drive minimizes the risk of data breach by making data inaccessible.

Conclusion

Businesses today realize the power of data and are altering their processes to become data-driven companies. Data-driven businesses are five times more likely to make faster decisions than their market peers, and twice as likely to land in the top quartile of financial performance within their industries. So, data analytics is a business asset and is here to stay.

By Sudhir Kothari, MD and CEO, Embee Software