Working from home is no longer a luxury enjoyed by a few, but a necessity for all, triggered by the lockdown imposed on our society due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Given this necessity, we have formulated five simple questions that enables you to assess the level of security that you have for your data. If your answer to all the five questions is yes, you have Five-Star security, however, but with every no, your security level drops a notch.
Ready to take the test to know where you stand?
- Is the application you access https enabled?
Data-in-transit is vulnerable as it can be intercepted in transit by hackers and needs protection. The most popular form for achieving this is using TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates. Secure applications have the address prefixed with https, standing for hyper-text-transfer-protocol-secure. It ensures that your data in transit between your browser and the application is secure by using encryption method.
- Do you need a password to access the application?
Sites that require password for access are safer that sites that do not as they capture not only the user details but also their password, thereby enabling traceability of the user.
- Does the application have a second level authentication like bio-metric validation or an OTP?
Second factor authentication like bio-metric details and One Time Pass-codes supplement the password access control and further strengthen the access controls by preventing unauthorized access.
- Is your data encrypted ‘at rest’ in the application?
Data in human readable form is called plain text. Hence your data stored in secure application, i.e. data at rest, is protected by converting plain text to cyber-text using encryption techniques. Common encryption techniques are substitution, where one set of characters are replaced by another set, and transposition, where the characters are rearranged to displaced from their original location.
- Is your application ISO 27000 series certified for security and confidentiality?
Cyber security is a highly technical and evolving domain which has standards for security certification. ISO 27000 series is the most popular certification for Information security. ISO 27001 is or Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), 27017 for Information Security on Cloud and 27018 is for protecting Personal Identifiable Information on Cloud.