Federal agencies depend on data for a variety of reasons for example, weather forecasting intelligence analysis, energy research and more. They need to store and analyze and make sense of huge amounts of data while ensuring that it stays in the right hands. Many agencies are turning to cloud technology to safeguard their sensitive data. Cloud technologies provide an efficient, secure and high-performance method to manage large-scale data analytics and data sciences without the risk that data is compromised.

But merely putting data into the cloud isn’t enough. Data is constantly being attacked from bad actors, both inside and outside of organizations. To protect data, federal agencies need to use a comprehensive security ecosystem that incorporates the appropriate technology platforms and tools to ensure that data is secured in transit, at rest, and in the cloud.

The key to safe and secure data management is to have a defense in depth structure, with strict access controls at every level of the data stack. This helps prevent thieves from stealing important information and prevents data from being deleted or compromised even if the server is down.

Another important best practice is data separation. This completely safe and secure data management helps to separate sensitive data from data with a high sensitivity. This helps prevent data breaches and helps organizations to adhere to regulations such as GDPR.

To ensure data is as secure as they can, businesses are encouraged to use encryption to hide the contents of databases and files. Encryption transforms normal text into unreadable code, so only authorized users can read it. Many security solutions provide key management functions, which allows organizations to keep track of and manage keys.