Protecting data from cradle to grave

September 21, 2006

When attackers gained access to personal information on 19,000 students at Carnegie Mellon University last April, business and network administrators there began a systemwide review of data policies. As a result, the university drastically reduced its use of Social Security numbers (SSN) and implemented new security-management controls around its Oracle databases. But when it came to protecting data extracted from a database, Joe Jackson, system architect at the school, was at a loss.

"Controlling the utilization of unstructured data is incredibly challenging, because once that data's out of the database, controls don't work," he says.

Centralized database security management and auditing is a good first step. But organizations should also protect the safety and integrity of data at other points.

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