Concepts and Tools for Protecting Sensitive Data in the IT Industry: A Review of Trends, Challenges and Mechanisms for Data-Protection

Advancements in storage, dissemination and access of multimedia data content on the Internet continues to grow at exponential rates, while individuals, organizations and governments spend huge efforts to exert their fingerprint in this information age through the use of online multimedia resources to propagate thoughts, services, policies, ecommerce and other types of information. Furthermore, information at different levels may be classified into confidential, sensitive and critical data types. Such data has been subject to numerous tools and techniques for providing automated information processing, information management and storage mechanisms. Consequently, numerous security tools and techniques have also emerged for the protection of data at the various organizational levels and according to different requirements. This paper discusses three important types of information security aspects that includes; data-storage, in-transit data and data access-prevention for unauthorized users. In particular, the paper reviews and presents the latest trends and most common challenges in information security with regards to data-breaches and vulnerabilities found in industry today using simple brief summaries for the benefit of IT practitioners and academics. Thereafter, state-of-the-art techniques used to secure information content commonly required in applications-software, in-house operations software or websites are given. Mechanisms for enhancing data-protection under the given set of challenges and vulnerabilities are also discussed. Finally, the importance of using information security policies and standards for protecting organizational data content is discussed along with foreseeable open issues for future work.

@article{Tayan2017,
  title     = {Concepts and Tools for Protecting Sensitive Data in the IT Industry: A Review of Trends, Challenges and Mechanisms for Data-Protection},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {8},
  number    = {2},
  year      = {2017},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Omar Tayan},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080207},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.080207}
}