Question

Why is data security important now more than ever? What are some of the steps that we can take to ensure that our database is protected and secure? How can you use user views to enhance security and restrict access?

Answer 1

A: Today’s world depends largely on electronic information; therefore, data security is more important than ever. Most of our business functions and personal life work now depend upon computers, mobile, and Internet which is why there's a lot of data to secure. The amount of data travel over the network through cloud and data platform is tremendous.With so much data being generated it’s important that we control and safeguard the transfer of sensitive or personal information.Along with antivirus software and firewalls, there are various other methods for data safety in the digital era. With rising digital data there is rise in threat of data loss or misuse because of viruses, hacking, data leakages etc.

B: Steps we can take to ensure that our database is protected and secure are:

1. Establish Strong passwords- combination of capital and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols and make it 8 to 12 characters long. Avoid using personal data as password and update your password frequently.
2. Use strong firewall- A firewall protects your network by controlling internet traffic coming into and flowing out of your business.
3. Install antivirus- it will help removing internet and other viruses from the system to ensure safety of data.
4. Update software’s regularly to ensure security as old virus will not affect new updated software’s.
5. Secure your laptops and mobiles- due to portability they have higher risk of loss or theft, take extra care to keep it safe.
6. Encryption- encrypt your data so that if wrong password is entered or unauthorised access is made data is in non-readable format. It could only be decoded by person who has the right key.
7. Backup regularly- regular backups on external hard drive or cloud is an easy and efficient way to ensure that data is stored safely.
8. Educate employees- Training employees about safe internet practices and proactive defence.

C: Database views permits you to easily reduce the problem of the end user experience and restrict their power to access data contained in database by restricting the data shown to the end user.

1. By limiting the number of views user cannot use data for many times reducing the risk of misuse of data as he cannot access the data when number of views available to him/her expires.
2. By restricting data access by giving the right to only necessary data to concerned employee in an organisation. For e.g. An Inventory manager in an organisation has the right to view only inventory accounts and books by his allotted Employee ID and Password on the system and not every information. Whereas a Managing Director has the right to view every information of the organisation.

With the help of above tools data security is enhanced in any organisation and it is also user friendly as only concerned information is shared with the person using the database.