2021: A Data Security Year in Review

The coronavirus pandemic clearly changed the way many of us work. From daily downtown commuters to military base employees, vast numbers of employees saw their day job location change virtually overnight nearly two years ago.

According to a report published by Pew Research, prior to the pandemic about 20% of workers who say their job could be performed from home actually did so. By December 2021, 71% of these people were working from home. And more than 50% said they would prefer to continue working from home after the coronavirus pandemic ends.

Now, just over a year after the original report was published, many employers have embraced flexible schedules for their workers and a hybrid approach is quite common, with people splitting time between the workplace and home—or from an Airbnb somewhere.

People are more engaged and productive from home, though there are challenges, of course. Zoom fatigue. Childcare. Not everyone is able to leave the workplace for home. And home workers are a cybersecurity nightmare for corporate IT professionals.

2021: No Immunity from Breaches

While the year brought hope with vaccinations, 2021 brought a cornucopia of security breaches and data snafus. The 10 Worst Password Snafus of 2021 from TechRepublic provides eye-opening reading. Most of us know about the Russian SolarWinds attack where malicious code infected thousands of users in U.S. federal agencies like the Pentagon, State Department, Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, and Treasury. What is less well known is that this attack may have been facilitated by the weak password “solarwinds123”.

Meanwhile, a Security Magazine column—A Cybersecurity Year in Review—reminded us about the May 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, which caused the pipeline to be shut down for six days. As a result, airlines had to change their flight schedules, fuel shortages were experienced in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and average fuel prices rose to their highest since 2014.

Data disruption is not limited to cyberattacks. As described in a Tom’s Hardware report, 77 terabytes of critical research data was lost because Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a software update that caused a script to malfunction and delete backup data.

What would a review be without a look forward. TechRepublic shared 8 Advanced Threats Kaspersky Predicts for 2022. In addition to mobile devices being targeted and an increase in supply chain attacks, these threats include cyberattacks on—you guessed it—people working from home.

2021: DIGISTOR Products for Data Security

These cyberattacks can be targeted at data in motion, data in use, and data at rest (DAR). At DIGISTOR, we specialize in helping military and government agencies and commercial entities of all sizes find the right encrypted storage solution to secure their DAR. During 2021, we made several security-related product announcements, including:

We also posted several blogs in 2021 about data security and related areas. For example:

All in all, 2021 was a year with both challenges and triumphs. Let’s hope that 2022 if a better year for all of us, not least with respect to thwarting cyberattacks and securing our data. Speaking of which, with a wide range of secure storage offerings, from bare drives to removable solutions to Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC)-ready SSDs, we can assist you with specifying the appropriate storage devices to secure your important data. If you have any questions as to how securing DAR might apply to your own data security requirements, please feel free to contact us.