By investing in an integrated data protection solution offering encryption, key manage­ment, and tokenization, users will have the best available insurance against significant business loss.

Editor's Note: This article introduces a white paper titled "Best Practices in Data Protection: Encryption, Key Management and Tokenization." It is available free from the MC Press White Paper Center.

Protecting sensitive and business-critical data is essential to a company's reputation, profitability and business objectives. Companies know they can't afford a data breach—customer churn, loss of business, brand damage, fines and litigation. In today's global market, where business data and personal information know no boundaries, traditional point solutions that protect certain devices or applications against specific risks are insufficient to provide cross-enterprise data security.

As enterprises seek to protect data from cybercriminals, internal theft or even accidental loss, encryption and key management have become increasingly important and proven weapons in the security arsenal for data at rest in databases, files and applications, and for data in transit. And now there is a new strategy that adds an extra layer of data protection—tokenization. Combined, these offer the most powerful enterprise-wide data protection available today.

This article describes best practices in encryption, key management and tokenization and how an integrated, multi-level solution can effectively meet these best practices.

Enterprises must recognize that enormous business risks are associated with the methods that they use to protect their sensitive and business-critical data. Think Coca-Cola and KFC and their secret recipes. Granted, a secret recipe probably isn't your company's greatest data asset. But you do have the equivalent competitive advantage in your customer lists, patents, financial statements and so on. Whatever business you are in, you need to ensure that your data is protected. By investing in an integrated data protection solution that offers encryption, key manage­ment and tokenization, you'll have the best available insurance against the potential loss of business, brand equity and customer loyalty.

Today's enterprise faces a daunting security challenge. Not only must it build an impregnable fortress around its internal networks and applications, but it must also contend with the complications of sending and receiving encrypted data, and encrypting data at rest within application files and databases that were not designed for secure handling of data.

Editor's Note: Want to learn more? Download the white paper titled "Best Practices in Data Protection: Encryption, Key Management and Tokenization." It is available free from the MC Press White Paper Center.

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