As a customer, I trust the businesses I interact with to protect my personal data. I don’t want my credit card details or my transaction history to be shared, and I certainly don’t want details about where I am eating or which movie I am watching to become public knowledge.

With online privacy concerns at an all-time high, data security has become a mainstream conversation. It is no longer limited only to boardrooms, but is now also discussed in private living rooms. Along with terrorism and the Ebola virus, data security is one of the biggest potential threats to our nation at this moment in time.

Home Depot, Sony Pictures Entertainment and JPMorgan Chase are just a few of the recent examples of major security breaches caused by either internal users or outside malicious attacks.

Data has always been a strong driver for businesses, and the growing desire of many enterprises to leverage new technologies only exacerbates the already high risk of security and data breaches. In a recent Forbes article, IBM Security Vice President Marc van Zadelhoff makes it clear that with the industry-wide transitions toward the cloud, social, mobile and big data, data is outside the control of the enterprise perimeter and we need to change the way we secure it. From the old perimeter-type approach of firewall and antivirus solutions, we need to adopt the logical “perimeter” approach to secure data, wherever it resides.

When a data breach does occur, enterprises and their IT organizations are often not even aware of where their sensitive data lies. Consequently, they don’t have the right policies and separation of duties to protect sensitive data, especially when accessed by privileged users, as was the case in the recent Morgan Stanley data breach.

Download the free eBook: Bridging the Data Security Gap

Data security today needs to take a holistic approach, and IBM Security offers an effective and efficient solution set that understands and caters to customer processes and anxieties over their sensitive data. IBM InfoSphere Guardium™ can help your organization leverage the cloud, mobile, social and big data with confidence. In the end, this is the basis for your business’ success.