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Exploiting security flaws is one of the major tactics used by cybercriminals to attack organizations. Vulnerabilities are an unfortunate fact of life for operating systems, applications, hardware devices and databases. An attack against a database can easily compromise sensitive and confidential user and customer data. Based on analysis fromImperva covering 27,000 on-premises databases around the world, it was found that one out of every two databases contains as least one vulnerability. Organizations typically focus on perimeter and endpoint security with the assumption that their databases and data would be protected, but that is not the case.

Organizations also don’t regularly patch and update databases as frequently as they should. Imperva even found some vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched for more than three years. The large number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) found in most databases present hackers with a tempting and easy target making it easy for them to exploit the flaw. With so many vulnerabilities to patch, severe ones are often ignored and more than half of the security holes in databases are ranked as High or Critical. These types of flaws allow hackers to steal or corrupt data and take control of networks. Check out our Technical Solutions page to learn more about how our custom IT services and solutions built specifically for your business can help you avoid these issues so you can stay up, stay running, and stay protected.

Here are 3 tips to protect your organization’s databases and data from security exploits:

1. Inventory your Databases: You can’t protect your data unless you know where it resides. This means you need to find and catalog every database in your organization, including rogue ones that may have been established outside the scope of your security. Performing this type of inventory should also entail the deployment of tools to look for anomalies in database activity combined with ways to prevent security flaws from being exploited. Here at bva our managed IT services can help you defend your data and enhance your security.

2. Prioritize Patching for Critical Vulnerabilities and Critical Data: Ideally, your IT and security support team would have time to patch every security flaw as soon as it’s discovered. However, that may not be feasible due to limited staffing and limited time. Instead, the trick is to prioritize your patching by focusing not only on the most serious flaws but on the most critical or sensitive data. For this, you’ll need to use tools that can identify which databases hold the most confidential customer or user information, again our services can help you with this.

3. Be Aware of the Risks of Digital Transformation: Many organizations are going forward with digital transformation projects to move their data to the cloud. However, managing your on-premises security is difficult enough without the added challenge of securing data transferred to the cloud. As you migrate your data, you need to have a clear and consistent strategy on how to protect it whether it’s on-premises, in the cloud, or both. Visit our Cloud Computing page to see how we can help you prevent data loss with enterprise storage and cloud infrastructure to ensure your applications/data are always up and active.