Federal agencies rely on data for a variety of purposes including weather forecasting, intelligence analysis as well as energy research. These agencies must organize, analyze and interpret the sense of huge amounts of data while ensuring it remains in the right hands. To protect their sensitive data, many agencies are turning to cloud computing which provide a secure way to manage large-scale, high-performance data analytics and data science without the risk of compromising data.

But simply putting data into the cloud isn’t sufficient. Data is constantly being attacked by criminals both inside and outside organizations. To keep data safe, federal agencies need to use a comprehensive security ecosystem that includes the right technology platforms and tools to ensure that anti-virus software data is secure in transit, at rest and in the cloud.

The key to secure and secure data management is a defense in depth structure, with strict access control at every level of the data stack. This prevents thieves stealing valuable data, and also stops data from being lost or stolen even if the server is down.

A second important best practice is data separation. This separates sensitive data from data with high sensitivity. This helps to protect against data breaches and also allows companies to comply with regulations like GDPR.

To ensure data is as secure as is possible, companies are encouraged to use encryption to conceal the contents of databases and files. Encryption transforms normal text into an unreadable code that only authorized users can read. Many security solutions also include key management capabilities, which allow organizations to keep track of the keys.