Don’t get caught with PII being under-protected

Government Data breaches

Data breaches and data leaks have been far more common over the past few years than people know, especially within government. Governments are becoming commonly known for their data breaches throughout the years because they have been focused on making private information public in a timely fashion, but they have been relying on the manual redaction process, and too often personally identifiable information (PII) gets missed. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason as to why governments are so vulnerable, this will not be the last time issues like these get major mainstream attention.

Why are government records being targeted?

Government documents such as; Land Records contain various amounts of PII. PII is known as any data that could potentially identify a specific individual, or any information that can be used to distinguish one person from another and can be used for de-anonymizing anonymous data. Much of government security’s focus is on protecting personally identifiable information, and for good reason. We are approaching 1 billion PII records exposed over the past 10 years.

What are some examples of PII?

PII — such as Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and credit card information — can live practically anywhere on the corporate network. It can be in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF files and even text files such as application logs. These sensitive assets are dubbed “unstructured information” because they’re not in a database, and many organizations don’t have PII security measures in place.  It’s there for the taking — viewing, copying, deleting — and when something bad happens, companies may never know about it.

There are Tools to improve PII security

Companies can’t afford to be unaware or under-protected. The first step toward fixing security issues is acknowledging the problem. The good news is there are great tools — such as Extract Systems, that will help prevent breaches from becoming an issue within government offices.

Request to speak to a solution consultant right away, and learn how Extract can help your organization before it is too late.