Do you know the value of your data?

If organisations such as Sony, Sega and Citibank are asked to quantify the value of their data, they would be able to answer immediately, as they have all experienced data loss played out in the public arena.  This has resulted in many senior managers asking their IT teams to quantify the value of their data, the risk and the value of a breach or loss.

MPA has found that once a data breach is identified as a risk, there are initially more questions than answers.  The simplest being:  "What is the value of the data that is stored to my business?  How can I reliably identify the data that is mission critical?  How could it leave my business?"  The challenge for IT teams is how to answer these questions.

From our experience in the New Zealand market MPA can assist.  We have adopted a process defined by global Data Loss Prevention leaders McAfee, where issues are addressed through a combination of senior management investigation and technological auditing.  By conducting data indexing and mining we can rapidly determine where the mission critical data is stored, where data can exit and if there have been any incidents of data loss during an audited period.

These initial steps lay the foundation to address the key questions of whether critical data is at risk, what is that risk and how can the risk be mitigated? 

For a copy of the whitepaper on this DLP discovery service by MPA please contact mark.micklefield@mpa.co.nz.