Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft BitLocker

by BitTruster

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Introduction

BitLocker is Microsoft Windows’s encryption tool that has the ability to encrypt the entire drive. Data encryption is highly important in any personal device or enterprise system because it performs the sensitive process of making any data unreadable without proper authorization. BitLocker is a tool that is available to anyone who has Windows 7 or any other higher version. 

Microsoft truly changed the computer security world when they introduced BitLocker. It wasn’t the first encryption tool introduced to the market, however it was the first one with the disk encryption technology and OS coming from the same vendor, ultimately leading to a much better integration. All data that any company creates, stores, collects and exchanges is deemed to be the most valuable asset this company has. Safeguarding it from any external, unauthorized party saves them from potential financial loss, GDPR or CCPA fines, reputation damage, loss of their consumers’ trust etc. Who would want that, right? Therefore, knowing the ins and outs of BitLocker is crucial if you want to achieve full protection of your device/devices’ data. Before going more into detail, let’s clarify something

Biggest Mistakes Companies Make When Securing Data!

Keeping sensitive data properly safeguarded and secure from any data breach and theft in today’s very fast paced high tech world, isn’t a very easy process. You probably got that already from what was written above. However, there are enterprises that still haven’t perfected the way they store and secure data. There are cases in which they don’t even know where their data is stored. Nonetheless, this is the perfect opportunity to learn what other enterprises are doing wrong so that you won’t do the same.

Properly handling data is highly complicated for sole users, let alone big enterprises that have a higher volume of information at stake. To simplify it, I recommend you keep two essential parts to achieve proper protection of sensitive data in mind:

 Data classification

All data is important. However, there is data that would highly impact the enterprise if they get out and there is other data that would cause little to no impact. So what does data classification have to do with this? Well, a lot indeed. Every business, no matter how small or big, needs to make data classification a priority. A lot of industry experts recommend you classify data according to their sensitivity:

·         Restricted data – The most sensitive data should go in here. Any data that could cause serious harm when compromised should be classified as restricted. The access to this data should be allowed for internal use only.

·         Private data – The access to this data should also be internal only. In this case, data that leaks out will cause a moderate risk for the company.

·         Public data – This is the least sensitive data your enterprise has stored. Little to no harm is caused to the enterprise if this data is compromised.

Data encryption

Encryption of data at rest is all about encrypting the data that is stored in the database and is not moving through networks.  This type of encryption is extremely important because it provides an in-depth defense protection. Thus, encryption at rest provides data protection for all the stored data inside the disk. A great tool that provides this type of data encryption is, as you might have guessed already, Microsoft BitLocker.This type of encryption being provided by BitLocker is not only great for sole users but mostly for big organizations. If there ever happens to be an attack against the hard disk in which the data is stored, then BitLocker is designed to prevent the attacker from accessing any unencrypted data by making sure that all data put inside the disk is already encrypted. 

Knowing the importance of data you are protecting, where you are storing it and classifying it, and more important of all, encrypting it, will make it much easier for you as a CISO or CIO to protect your enterprise from all data breaches.

Ready to Get Started?

2021 is the year of privacy and enterprises should definitely make it a priority. Being part of the data collecting process means that at some point you will have to deal with GDPR or any other data privacy regulations or laws. So how to ensure complete data privacy?

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