How "Big Iron" Does "Big Regulation"

According to Verizon, there were over there were over 53,000 security incidents in 2017, with over 2,200 of those identified as confirm data breaches. A Ponemon Institute study also showed that companies experiencing a data breach took an average of 147 days to detect that breach. These statistics serve a key motivator of Stuart McIrvine, Director of Product Management at Broadcom.  In this role, Stuart is responsible for helping Broadcom’s customers protect data held on mainframe systems around the world.  A rapidly broadening aspect of this job is keeping up with evolving data protection and privacy laws. Stuart highlighted his ever relentless drive to build and maintain customer trust in this area during his Conversations with Dez podcast. 

With his extensive experience in hardware with IBM, Software with HP and Operations Management with the newly acquired CA Technologies, Stuart believes that all business comes down to one simple truth. That is a business customer is not going to buy from a company unless they have first established trust. Being a proud husband and father of two young women, one of whom is also working at Broadcom, Mr. McIrvine extends this customer-focused passion towards always delivering the service that any specific customer requests in the way that customer wants and expects.

Maintaining Customer Trust

As the product manager of Broadcom’s computer mainframes, the most secure platform ever built, Mr. McIrvine finds himself in an excellent position from which to pursue his passion. In today’s era of Big Data and Big Regulation, enterprises are increasingly focused on establishing and enhancing their security and compliance strategy. Cross-enterprise data security and compliance must, therefore, protect business-critical data, drive productivity and enhance the enterprise’s overall digital profile. Those companies that chose to take advantage of Broadcom’s leading mainframe security product portfolio are using proven enterprise data security solutions.

During the podcast, Mr. McIrving highlighted that companies must establish and maintain trust with their customers and that protection of their customer’s data is foundational to that trust. To do this, he shared the results of a recent Ponemon Institute study in which indicated that 65% of consumers lose trust in a company that has suffered a customer data breach. Although it’s common knowledge that public companies also see their stock price decline after a breach, those that have superior security posture and quick response to a breach recover from this equity loss over 12 times faster. More importantly, over 30% of consumers discontinued their relationship with a breached company. Regaining that lost customer also costs a company seven times more money when compared to a new acquisition. This data means that a company’s success is heavily dependent on their ability to prove themselves as a trusted institution.

Protecting “Big Iron” data

From an internal point of view, the most significant security spending driver is compliance. In reality, this represents the company’s ability to demonstrate compliance to outside auditors. Since mainframe computers represent the largest repository of customer data, they wind up being the most attractive target for data thieves. According to Mr. Irvine, the typical large company experiences about 2.9 audits per year. 

To avoid data and value loss and to keep up with rapid change in data regulations, companies must update their data management policies by:

• Recognizing that data security compliance isn’t something demonstrated just to auditors, but that it must be demonstrated to customers as well. Recognition means embracing continuous compliance as a competitive differentiator.
• Augmenting the traditional identity-centric data security model that focuses on access control with a data-centric security model that highlights understanding what data the company holds through the aggressive use of information categories and a robust data classification process.: and
• Leveraging these reinforcing views of data as a means of tightening up data access controls and gaining the ability to demonstrate knowledge of where all an organization’s sensitive data is located at all times; and
• Implementing effective data governance which, in turn, enables proper risk management of customer data.

Learn more about how to follow these proven steps toward protecting your company’s customer data by talking with a Broadcom mainframe expert. They are available to help you find the right solution to meet your organization’s specific needs.

This post was brought to you by @Broadcom.

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