What do data protection vendors do? What are the roles they play in any company’s data security? If you want to know, keep on reading this blog.
Data Protection Vendors
Data protection vendors are companies that provide the means to protect or secure data. They usually provide hardware, software, or a combination of both. Depending on the needs of the company they can provide products that are managed by the vendor. or can be self-managed by the company purchasing them as part of their service.
Then, the main job of a vendor is to secure data. This is done by providing products, services, and solutions. One that will prevent unauthorized access to data and ensure compliance with regulations and laws.
Moreover, some vendors such as Symantec offer a full line of products for all stages of information protection. Their offerings include data at rest (on servers), data in transit (across networks), and data in use (in applications). Other vendors offer products that cover one aspect of information protection such as backup, archive, encryption, and more.
Then, these vendors also provide services to help manage and integrate the solutions they sell into existing infrastructure. They can also provide security audits, policy definition and enforcement, monitoring, and more. These services can be offered on-site or remotely depending on the needs of the customer.
So how do these products differ from one another? The answer is what is known as “architecture” or “platform”. This refers to how the product operates and how it is installed in a company’s environment to be used. There are three main architectures: on-premises hosted or cloud-based.
Types of Data Protection Vendors
On-premises architecture means that a company would purchase software from a vendor. That would then be installed on the company’s servers within its infrastructure. Hosted architecture means that a company would purchase software from a vendor. But instead of having it installed on its servers, it would have it installed on servers owned by the vendor itself.
Finally, cloud-based architecture means that software would be purchased from a vendor. But instead of being installed on local infrastructure, it would live in a cloud environment. One that is provided by either the vendor or another third-party company (i.e. Amazon).
When choosing the right kind for your company, you should consider which ones you are most comfortable with and which ones would best fit your organization. The first thing that you need to look at is the types of data you have. Then, you need to determine what you need to protect that data with.
For example, if you have a lot of data that needs to be protected from unauthorized access then an encryption solution would likely be the best choice for you. Also, if regulations such as GDPR apply to your company then a vendor with a cloud-based solution would be the best option for you. The reason why is because cloud-based solutions are much easier to scale and maintain than on-premises solutions.
Final Words
As you can see many things need to be considered when choosing a data protection vendor. After all, protecting your company’s data is very important and should not be taken lightly.