7 Non-Financial Data Types to Secure

Credit card and social security numbers aren't the only sensitive information that requires protection.

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As more and more personally identifiable information (PII) has moved online, cybercriminals have been able to gain access to deeper stores of data and build more complete pictures of their victims. Whether the information concerns health, movement, or political views, it adds up to a rich, complete version of an individual that can be stolen, mimicked, or manipulated.

The largest data breach so far, the Yahoo incident, didn't involve financial data - instead exposing the real names, email addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, and security questions of roughly 3 billion people to hackers. The next largest, that of Adult Friend Finder, gave names, email addresses, and passwords to the attackers. In neither of these cases were credit card or social security numbers released, but both were highly damaging to many of those effected and in the case of Yahoo, devastating to the company itself.

This shows that if criminals are willing to attack an organization to gain non-financial information on users and customers, then the IT department should be willing to treat that information as important, too.

Here's a look at seven data types many companies have collected and hoarded with abandon, and that need to protected just like financial data. If your organization has terabytes of any of these data types sitting in a warehouse, lake, or cluster, then it may be time to start the audit to see just how exposed it — and your company — truly are.

About the Author

Curtis Franklin, Principal Analyst, Omdia

Curtis Franklin Jr. is Principal Analyst at Omdia, focusing on enterprise security management. Previously, he was senior editor of Dark Reading, editor of Light Reading's Security Now, and executive editor, technology, at InformationWeek, where he was also executive producer of InformationWeek's online radio and podcast episodes

Curtis has been writing about technologies and products in computing and networking since the early 1980s. He has been on staff and contributed to technology-industry publications including BYTE, ComputerWorld, CEO, Enterprise Efficiency, ChannelWeb, Network Computing, InfoWorld, PCWorld, Dark Reading, and ITWorld.com on subjects ranging from mobile enterprise computing to enterprise security and wireless networking.

Curtis is the author of thousands of articles, the co-author of five books, and has been a frequent speaker at computer and networking industry conferences across North America and Europe. His most recent books, Cloud Computing: Technologies and Strategies of the Ubiquitous Data Center, and Securing the Cloud: Security Strategies for the Ubiquitous Data Center, with co-author Brian Chee, are published by Taylor and Francis.

When he's not writing, Curtis is a painter, photographer, cook, and multi-instrumentalist musician. He is active in running, amateur radio (KG4GWA), the MakerFX maker space in Orlando, FL, and is a certified Florida Master Naturalist.

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