Themed “Storage and Data Centres”, the CIO East Africa breakfast hosted industry players in the IT enterprise storage field, data centre solution providers and security experts to discuss pertinent issues in the area of storage of data.
Speaking during the forum, Alex de Graaf Senior Manager Sales Engineering, McAfee advised organizations to enact internal data loss prevention rules.
Since the right technology exists business stakeholders should be aligned and raise awareness on data loss threat levels in their systems. These threats can come from outside or inside the organization; therefore sensitive information can be lost anywhere. Information can either be in a saved state, in transition between two devices or under access from a user.  Data protection solutions will vary in type and method in these three stages of data.

The first step in securing data is through classification , where various classes of data emerge according to its sensitivity. The second step is then defining data loss prevention policies in place to outline the way forward for any data lost. This will ensure that businesses will be able to protect their customers and partners’ data for a competitive advantage.

Organizations can afterwards consider storage and disaster recovery solutions like offshore data centres. At the end business should also achieve a return of investment(ROI) after investing on data centres. For instance British American Tobacco achieved its ROI after 2 years when it invested US& 150,000 on their data centre in Thika town, Kenya.

It is also important to protect and secure data centres. Encryption of data on the move is important to avoid easy access to information. Proper configuration of servers by avoiding default options during installation is also an often overlooked threat. It is also important to put in place data audit trails which help identify who accessed the data and what time it happened.