Security Zen: The Yin and Yang of Protecting Your Information

In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin and yang is used to describe how seemingly opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent, in turn giving rise to each other. Today’s small businesses are struggling to find their own yin and yang—achieving a balance between protecting their information while also keeping management simple and costs low. Is there a way that these two opposing elements can give rise to each other and result in a stronger infrastructure? The key for small businesses is to leverage new options that provide maximum protection with minimal hassle.

On one hand, small businesses need to protect their information and systems from theft, accidental loss, corruption and downtime. On the other, they need to reduce the burden of technology so they can focus on their business. More and more, businesses find that IT is their life preserver in a sea of information. But if the technology that protects them is too difficult to manage, it can actually detract from their success.

Dark Forces are at Work

To find the right balance, it is important to understand the world around you. Today, hackers and cybercriminals are unleashing viruses, worms, botnets and other malicious threats at a furious pace. These threats are designed to find and steal valuable information—from bank account numbers to your customers’ identities—which is then sold or traded on a thriving underground economy. Moreover, today’s threats don’t announce themselves; instead, they’re engineered to quietly sneak onto systems when an unsuspecting user clicks on a legitimate-looking link or opens a harmless-looking message. Thus, these threats can not only leave businesses exposed to malicious activity but also unaware of their vulnerability.

That’s not all. Valuable information may simply be lost because a critical system goes down. Regardless of how long a disruption lasts, what caused it or how much data is impacted; information loss and business interruptions can quickly bring a small business to its knees. When such an event happens, businesses lose data, momentum and opportunity as they struggle to follow complex and time-consuming procedures to get complicated systems back up and running. They may be able to recover some critical information, but they will inevitably lose data that has not been backed up.

The Yin: A Security Solution that Offers Protection

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine