In our last post we reviewed the Data Security Lifecycle, but other than some minor wording changes (and a prettier graphic thanks to PowerPoint SmartArt) it was the same as our four-year-old original version.

But as we mentioned, quite a bit has changed since then, exemplified by the emergence and adoption of cloud computing and increased mobility. Although the Lifecycle itself still applies to basic, traditional infrastructure, we will focus on these more complex use cases, which better reflect what most of you are dealing with on a day to day basis.

Locations

One gap in the original Lifecycle was that it failed to adequately address movement of data between repositories, environments, and organizations. A large amount of enterprise data now transitions between a variety of storage locations, applications, and operating environments. Even data created in a locked-down application may find itself backed up someplace else, replicated to alternative standby environments, or exported for processing by other applications. And all of this can happen at any phase of the Lifecycle.

We can illustrate this by thinking of the Lifecycle not as a single, linear operation, but as a series of smaller lifecycles running in different operating environments. At nearly any phase data can move into, out of, and between these environments – the key for data security is identifying these movements and applying the right controls at the right security boundaries.

As with cloud deployment models, these locations may be internal, external, public, private, hybrid, and so on. Some may be cloud providers, other traditional outsourcers, or perhaps multiple locations within a single data center.

For data security, at this point there are four things to understand:

  1. Where are the potential locations for my data?
  2. What are the lifecycles and controls in each of those locations?
  3. Where in each lifecycle can data move between locations?
  4. How does data move between locations (via what channel)?

Access

Now that we know where our data lives and how it moves, we need to know who is accessing it and how. There are two factors here:

  1. Who accesses the data?
  2. How can they access it (device & channel)?

Data today is accessed from all sorts of different devices. The days of employees only accessing data through restrictive applications on locked-down desktops are quickly coming to an end (with a few exceptions). These devices have different security characteristics and may use different applications, especially with applications we’ve moved to SaaS providers – who often build custom applications for mobile devices, which offer different functionality than PCs.

Later in the model we will deal with who, but the diagram below shows how complex this can be – with a variety of data locations (and application environments), each with its own data lifecycle, all accessed by a variety of devices in different locations. Some data lives entirely within a single location, while other data moves in and out of various locations… and sometimes directly between external providers.

This completes our “topographic map” of the Lifecycle. In our next post we will dig into mapping data flow and controls. In the next few posts we will finish covering background material, and then show you how to use this to pragmatically evaluate and design security controls.

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