Written by:
Matthew Delman Ransomware attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and widespread, posing a significant threat to organizations of all sizes. Research has identified more than 1,200 organizations on ransomware data leak sites in Q2 2024, the highest number of victims in a single quarter.
Ransom demands have also increased to an average of $1,571,667—a 102% jump from the previous quarter. In light of this charged environment, with organizations facing more ransomware attacks and needing to secure their critical information against threats, there needs to be more done than detection-based strategies that cybercriminals can easily find ways around.
One such method to protect data is through segmentation. The idea is that separating data into isolated segments means that organizations can limit the spread of ransomware in the organization and protect assets from encryption, exfiltration, or deletion.
Understanding Data Segmentation
Data segmentation, like network segmentation, involves creating smaller, more manageable units of data based on specific criteria or characteristics. You might create a data segment for financial information, one for marketing, one for different geographies, etc. Or perhaps there’s a data segment made of video files. Ultimately, creating data segments enables more granular control over access and permissions.
This empowers security teams with greater insight into who can access which data, and limits the ability of malicious actors to gain access to an entire network with a single login. This adds a layer of security beyond access control, ensuring that any attacker has only limited access to any particular data segment.
What this means is that ransomware attacks are less likely to spread beyond the initial point of infection, minimizing the potential damage. This slows down the attack’s spread and gives defenders more time to respond.
Moreover, sensitive data can be stored in segments with higher security and more monitoring. This further reduces the risk of exposure to ransomware because defenders are more likely to be paying closer attention to those secure segments.
Data segmentation can also help organizations comply with regulatory requirements, such as GDPR and HIPAA, by ensuring that sensitive data is protected appropriately. Segmenting customer data and protecting it with specific tooling means that you can more readily comply with the data privacy and data security requirements of specific privacy rules.
Data segmentation can strengthen an organization’s overall security posture by reducing the attack surface and making it more difficult for attackers to achieve their objectives. Multiple segments might seem to add more exposed assets, but the reality is that data in segments can be locked down more or less tightly and reduce the overall exposed attack surface for threat actors to find.
Lastly, business continuity and disaster recovery efforts gain some benefits from data segmentation. Disaster recovery efforts can focus on only the affected data segments instead of rebuilding the entire data architecture, while business continuity efforts can become more granular and focused with different segments requiring different strategies.
Criteria for Segmenting Data
The criteria for creating a data segment can vary substantially based on your organizational goals and strategies. A few of the options include:
- Sensitivity: Data can be segmented based on its sensitivity level, with highly sensitive data stored in more secure segments. Financial information can be stored in a separate segment from customer-facing materials, for example.
- Department: Data can be segmented by department or functional area to limit access to only authorized users. This means marketing can have their own data segment separate from product.
- Application: Data can be segmented based on the application or system that uses it. This could mean that the CRM has a separate segment from the production server.
- Location: Data can be segmented based on its physical location, such as on-premises or in the cloud. This could also be related to geographic location.
- Classification: Data can be segmented based on its classification, such as public, internal, or confidential.
- Business value: Data can be segmented based on its business value, with critical data stored in more secure segments.
- Data type: Data can be segmented based on its type, such as structured or unstructured data.
Implementing Data Segmentation
Implementing data segmentation requires careful planning and execution. Organizations should consider the following factors:
- Identify critical data: Determine which data assets are most valuable and require the highest level of protection.
- Define segmentation criteria: Choose the criteria that best align with your organization’s specific needs and security requirements.
- Implement access controls: Establish appropriate access controls to restrict access to data segments based on user roles and permissions.
- Monitor and audit: Regularly monitor network activity and audit access logs to identify and address any security vulnerabilities.
- Consider the use of technology: Utilize data segmentation tools and technologies to automate the process and ensure consistency.
Data segmentation to protect from ransomware or unauthorized access is not a one and done proposition. Your segmentation strategy needs to be revisited every so often to ensure that it’s still effective for your organization’s goals and needs.
How Sotero Helps With Data Segmentation
The Sotero platform unifies data security posture management and data detection and response into a single platform for robust defense against data threats like ransomware across all architectures. Sotero’s machine learning-powered data discovery empowers technical and non-technical users to define and manage sensitivity levels of specific data attributes. Its AI empowers teams to proactively scan and flag sensitive information, for effective risk mitigation and data protection. This enhances data segmentation strategies and defensive efforts against ransomware.
The Sotero solution empowers you to customize sensitivity parameters based on your data governance policies and compliance needs. These attributes can be customized to align with your specific segmentation requirements, ensuring the greatest possible flexibility in-platform and allowing for easy data classification and protection.
Our continuous monitoring and access management capabilities ensure that you’re never caught unaware of risks and can accurately ensure that only authorized personnel access sensitive data. With this defense in place, security teams can ensure regulatory compliance and defense against ransomware and unauthorized access.
Sotero customers can be confident in our comprehensive data security for both structured and unstructured data, whether on premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. With Sotero, data protection is more effective and critical data becomes more secure.