How industry-grade hosted solutions lull start-ups into false sense of security

There is some tough business cropping up for start-ups. As the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 looms, these new-age firms have to work their way up in ensuring pricey data of all sorts is safeguarded.

Among its various clauses, the Bill makes individual consent to data sharing or processing its prime focus, ensuring the right to privacy is adhered.

For start-ups, adhering to the Bill would be a Herculean task, say experts.

“Nowadays, it is easy to get industry hosted servers, hosted source code management and related software infrastructure to start your company at low opex cost. These industry-grade hosted solutions come with their own robust security provisions that alleviate data protection concerns of a start-up. But they also lull them into a dangerously false sense of security. The start-ups stop thinking about security as a point of concern since they have signed up with vendors. This is where security breaks down,” said Unni Nambiar, chief technologist at CASHe.

Nambiar said while source code and customer data on hosted servers are protected, data on individual laptops are grossly unprotected. “Weak employment contracts, flexible work-from-home options with non-existent IT departments and security policies, all combine to create a lethal combination that spells disaster when it comes to protecting intellectual property and consumer data.”

Data protection has assumed tremendous importance in the wake of 87 million Facebook users’ data being shared with Cambridge Analytica.

In India, over 3.24 million records across industries were stolen, lost or exposed in 2017, as per digital security firm Gemalto.

Failure to protect data of all kinds can prove expensive for start-ups in many ways.

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