In this era, we are living no one can dispute the impact technological information has had especially in the business world. If we just move back in time and compare how life was from the day to day activities to how business was conducted will make you appreciate to great extent the steps technological innovation has made especially to the way life is been led today. Despite all this good news that accompanied the technological inventions there also the other side of it which normally many industrialists don’t want to talk about often but its implication to both business and our social live is unmeasurable. Many institutions are facing imminent threats of protecting the data they have against any external invasion. Data is crucial to any organization, and firms spend millions of dollars investing in effective security system only to realize the problem they thought of cyber-attack vulnerability is not the only problem the firm faces. It is then advisable to normally do a background on all security systems from households to firms in order to ensure there are no problems hidden behind the visible threat. The Coca Cola Company can therefore use various technological solutions like data masking, data encryption and data resilience systems that would prevent unwarranted access of the company’s data.

Technological solutions to the Company’s data insecurity issues

The Coca Cola company can prevent or curb the data insecurity challenges it is facing by adopting some of the cutting edge technologies meant to offer data security like doing data masking, incorporation of data resilience software’s that prevents data from easily been compromised by a third party (Kahate, 2013). Also installing program that facilitates data encryption would go a long way to help reduce the risk of the company losing its data either through cyber-attack or during database migration.

a) Data masking

This is one of the effective technologies used largely in corporate word to provide security to the data of a company. Data masking which is normally known as data obfuscation is the process of hiding the native data of the company through modified content which creates so many steps and decryption process in order for one to be able to access those data (Zuk & Guruswamy, 2013). The sole reason for carrying out data masking to data system is to protect the data that is top level security for instance the coke formula of the Coca cola company is a classified data that the company would not want to fall in the wrong hands or at worse its competitors for they will be out of business as a result of that. For this technological solution to be considered effective it must be consistent in its function which is providing top level security to the data when various tests are done to the system.

Process of data masking

Finding the data

This is normally the first step which involves identifying the data that is classified and grouping it from the data that is not classified. This is often carried out by most company’s chief information specialist or data security analysist who puts together a detailed list of all classified data that needs to be protected from unauthorized access.

Assess the situation

At this stage the company needs to an oversight from the security administrator of the company on the in the data security information status of the company with regard to security since this will determine the type of data masking technique to be adopted by the company. He or she will also offer suggestion to be best data location and to what level does the data should be masked.

Implement masking

After carrying out the assessment of the situation and finding the data that requires masking the next step is to implement data masking technique which the company finds appropriate to use (Chen & Zhao, 2012). Remember that for big organization that deals with large volumes of data, it isn’t feasible to assume that a single or just using an easy to incorporate system can be used in the entire company’s data. Rather implementation must take into account effective and proper planning so that in the process no data is lost and therefore securing the entire data as a whole.

Test data masking results

This is the last step in data masking process since through various leaks might be identified early and their remedy found. Conducting the test ensures that the masking configuration yield the expected outcome. If it doesn’t then the DBA will restore the database to the premask state. Tweaks the masking algorithms and completes the data making process from the start.

Common Data masking techniques

Data masking techniques vary from one organization to the other depending with the level of data masking which the company prefers. Some of the data masking techniques include.

1. Encryption

2. Character scrambling,

3. Nulling out or deletion

4. Number and data variance

5. Substitution

6. Shuffling

b) Data resilience systems

Data resilience is one of the technique that is normally used to protect data and only avail it when it’s needed especially in the production line of a company or factory. There exist several technologies which address the data resilience and they include:

Logical replication

This technique is a widely used multisystem data resiliency topology for high recoverability in space normally the IBM space. Logical replication is normally deployed through a product that is provided by a high availability independent software vendor (ISV). The replication is then run through software approaches on objects, the changes to the objects are replicated to often a backup drive or copy (Perlman, Kaufman & Speciner, 2016). In addition, most logical replication solutions allow for the additional characters or modification beyond the object replication ascertaining solid proof systems.

c) Data encryption

Data encryption is one of the new and rapidly technologies that many companies are using to secure their highly classified data from been misused by those not meant to handle those data. Data encryption can be made where the data is guarded by several embedded security passcodes which can only be bypassed using the right encryption key.

Conclusion

Data security (especially in cybercrimes) is giving institutions hard time since they have to continually do security checks to their systems to determine any possible leaks in the systems they have installed. Adopting the appropriate data systems helps in long run to protection of data privacy and also improving operation efficiency of such firms.

References

Chen, D., & Zhao, H. (2012, March). Data security and privacy protection issues in cloud computing. In 2012 International Conference on Computer Science and Electronics Engineering(Vol. 1, pp. 647-651). IEEE.

Li, M., Lou, W., & Ren, K. (2010). Data security and privacy in wireless body area networks. IEEE Wireless communications,17(1), 51-58.

Perlman, R., Kaufman, C., & Speciner, M. (2016). Network security: private communication in a public world. Pearson Education India.

Kahate, A. (2013). Cryptography and network security. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Alpcan, T., & Başar, T. (2010). Network security: A decision and game-theoretic approach. Cambridge University Press.

Zuk, N., & Guruswamy, K. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,370,936. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.