Data Protection In The Age Of Stringent Privacy Regulations And Cyber Threats

Data protection is a critical aspect of any organization's data strategy, and in today's world, it is becoming increasingly important. In IDC's 2Q22 Cloud Pulse Survey, close to half of the respondents said that data sovereignty and industry compliance have been important topics when talking about future IT systems. The need for stringent data protection has been accelerated by the introduction of regulations that aim to protect the privacy of individuals. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in severe consequences for organizations, including fines and reputational damage that can impact the bottom line.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States, the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) in China, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada are some of the most significant regulations affecting data protection in different regions of the world.

It is not just a question of regulatory laws per Jason Conyard, CIO of VMware, as he indicated in a InformationWeek article, “customers want assurances about their data - how it is used, who it is shared with, and how it is protected.” The other consideration is protecting against cyber threats across different industries. Both data privacy and thwarting cyber attacks are key elements to ensure a company’s reputation, customers’ trust, business continuity, and future profitability.

In this blog we will explain how Macrometa provides features to maintain data privacy and how real-time data can aid cybersecurity efforts. We will begin by covering how Data Protection works with other components within the Macrometa platform, then go over specific features, cybersecurity, resiliency, and Macrometa’s SOC 2 certification.

The Macrometa GDN - a comprehensive solution platform with Data Protection

The Macrometa Global Data Network (GDN) is comprised of three key components: the Global Data Mesh, Edge Compute, and Data Protection. These components work together to provide comprehensive solutions for organizations seeking to optimize their data infrastructure and unlock the full potential of their data.

The Global Data Mesh component enables data to be replicated and synchronized across multiple data centers and cloud regions worldwide, providing seamless data access and management. The Edge Compute component enables data to be processed closer to where it is created and consumed, reducing latency and improving performance. The Data Protection component ensures compliance, security, and privacy for sensitive and regulated data through features like region-based secure vaults and data tokenization, allowing organizations to securely access, store, process, and analyze their data from anywhere in the world.

Exploring the benefits of Macrometa’s Data Protection

Data Protection is a critical aspect of the Macrometa GDN that allows organizations to have more control of their enterprise data with hyper locality for compliance and performance. With geo-distribution being a core feature of the Macrometa GDN, the ability to limit access to data by region and permissions is essential. The key features of Data Protection are:

GeoFabrics

GeoFabrics form the foundation for managing data distribution, replication, and synchronization across the distributed infrastructure of the GDN. They represent replication and synchronization rules between two or more data centers or cloud regions. GeoFabrics lets enterprises define policies for data placement and movement, ensuring that data is stored and processed in the appropriate locations based on latency, data sovereignty, and compliance requirements.

Region-based secure vaults

So many organizations today are global or multi-regional and have to manage the complexity of adhering to local privacy laws. Region-based secure vaults are designed to store sensitive PII data or regulated data in regional, country, or state-specific locations, ensuring compliance with data protection and privacy regulations. These vaults provide an additional layer of security, isolating sensitive data from the rest of the system and controlling access based on policies and permissions..

Data tokenization

Data tokenization is a key feature of the Macrometa GDN's Data Protection, enabling organizations to replace sensitive data with format-preserving tokens. This preserves the privacy and regulatory compliance of sensitive information while still allowing it to be used for processing and analysis. Data tokenization allows organizations to get a complete view of customer behaviors and patterns for better insights - without compromising privacy. For example, a primary account number (PAN) could be replaced with a random token like "ADF953JDL” to meet PCI-DSS requirements.

Anonymizers

Anonymizers are another key feature of the Macrometa GDN's Data Protection component. Anonymizers are functions that transform data into an anonymous or pseudonymous form, which cannot be used to identify an individual. The anonymized data can still be used for analysis, machine learning, or other purposes, without compromising the privacy of individuals. For example, names could be replaced with "User A" and precise locations could be generalized to only show the city or region.

Enabling cybersecurity at the edge

One important aspect that strengthens data protection is having cybersecurity methods in place. Cybersecurity will continue to be a top priority for technology leaders in 2023. The threat from cyber criminals is growing - FBI data shows reported cybercrime losses jumped 49% last year compared to 2021, exceeding $10 billion. With attacks on the rise, investing in cybersecurity remains crucial for companies.

Macrometa's Global Data Network (GDN) platform offers various features to enhance an organization’s cybersecurity by providing real-time data streaming to existing Log Analytics, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Because Macrometa has over 175 points of presence (PoPs) around the world, the roundtrip time for data analysis and processing is significantly faster than the centralized cloud. This real-time data can help organizations detect fraud faster - like credit card skimming at gas stations.

Enhancing fault tolerance and availability

The Macrometa GDN provides fault tolerant disaster recovery with its distributed data architecture and compute fabrics, delivering a flexible data integration platform. By using Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) for data replication across thousands of geographic locations, the Macrometa GDN provides greater scalability and fault tolerance by eliminating the need for a centralized arbitrator.

By co-locating microservices and data on the same node, the Macrometa GDN improves availability and reduces the risk of network failures or outages that can impact the ability to access data. In addition, Macrometa's approach of using an append-only log with materialized views ensures that the database can handle the sudden increase in workload without sacrificing performance or availability.

End-to-end encryption and SOC 2 certified platform

Macrometa prioritizes data security by implementing end-to-end encryption for data in motion and at rest, ensuring that an organization’s sensitive information is protected at all times. This robust approach to data security helps safeguard data from unauthorized access, interception, or tampering, providing an additional layer of protection for  organizations.

The Macrometa Global Data Network (GDN) has also been certified by third party auditors for the Trust Criterias of Security, Availability and Confidentiality. The SOC 2 auditing and certification process looked at Macrometa's Security Controls to ensure that the Macrometa GDN is operating in a secure, controlled, and audited environment. Macrometa demonstrated that the systems and data stored are protected against unauthorized access and unauthorized disclosure, and information and systems are available for operation and used to manage an organization’s most sensitive data workloads.

Learn more about Data Protection today

In conclusion, data protection is becoming increasingly important, and organizations need to maintain the security and privacy of sensitive data and take steps to ensure regulatory compliance. Macrometa's GDN platform provides features like region-based secure vaults, data tokenization and anonymizers to enable data privacy for sensitive and regulated data. With Macrometa solutions, organizations can store and process sensitive data in compliance with data privacy regulations and protect the privacy of individuals - all while maintaining application performance. To learn more about Macrometa Data Protection and solutions designed to solve the most challenging operational problems, chat with a solutions expert.