3 Essential Qualities to Look for in a Data Security Company

The cybersecurity market is brimming with countless solutions, each claiming to be the ultimate protection for your organization’s critical data. For a cybersecurity officer, CISO, or CIO, picking the right data security company can feel like finding a needle in a haystack—while blindfolded. 

How do you decide?

Should you prioritize budget constraints or aim for top-notch features, even if they come with a higher price tag? Balancing these factors is tough but fundamental to ensure your organization’s security remains rock-solid and dependable.

Here is a quick guide to help you identify the most reliable vendor.

We are not discussing product features but personality traits because, ultimately, human customers will buy goods or services from other humans. The guide focuses on three essential qualities: accessibility, proactivity, and staying up to date with the latest threats.

1. Are They Accessible? 

Timely Support and Communication

Cyber threats do not follow business hours, nor should your data security provider. Does the vendor offer round-the-clock support? If not, move to the next.

An attack often causes maximum disruption to a victim's business operations. Even the best recovery plan will fail without a dedicated team working to resolve the issue.

An accessible vendor is always within reach, ready to respond promptly to any security incidents or queries you might have. Are there multiple ways to reach the vendor (phone, email, live chat)? Establish the channels and Point of Contact on the vendor side and yours and cross-check the effectiveness of communication channels at regular intervals.

How quickly does the vendor typically respond to support requests? Check their response and resolution times in SLA (Service Level Agreements).

This proves you have a partner who provides a service and actively supports your organization.

2. Are They Proactive?

Identifying and Mitigating Risks Before They Become Problems

A proactive data security provider continuously monitors your systems for potential vulnerabilities and threats, identifying and addressing such risks before they can cause harm. The keyword here is Security Posture Management, and it is not a one-time exercise.

This is the need of the hour because what might be declared secure today could be vulnerable tomorrow. Besides, an organization alters its infrastructure by adding new applications and software, creating vulnerabilities that are often undetected until exploited.

Then, regulatory laws require organizations to modify their existing setup, which can also create new risks. Organizational changes such as staff turnover, mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring can all affect the security posture.

The security teams must validate that the vendor doesn't deploy its solutions and then neglect them. The vendor should provide a dashboard to help your teams identify security risks and understand how to resolve them. The vendor should also be available to assist you in patching these issues.

3. Are They Up to Date with the Latest Threats? 

Staying Ahead in a Dynamic Threat Landscape

Every organization is employing AI, and post-quantum cryptography has started its mainstream journey.

A concerning threat in AI is data poisoning. Attackers inject malicious code into the training sets used to build AI models. By corrupting the data, they can skew the model’s predictions and bypass security mechanisms. AI systems require vast amounts of data to function, and data integrity can be compromised due to poorly secured data repositories and weak encryption mechanisms.

Choose vendors that can establish data validation and multi-factor authentication processes to reduce the risk of data poisoning. Understand how often the vendor regularly audits datasets that can help find and remove anomalies or suspicious entries indicating tampering.

Now, for post-quantum computing.

Future quantum computers will soon be powerful enough to leverage the principles of quantum mechanics to perform complex calculations exponentially faster than classical computers and break current cryptographic methods such as RSA and ECC.

Your data security vendor must already be working to deploy quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. These new algorithms can withstand the cryptographic capabilities of quantum computers, ensuring the continued protection of today’s most sensitive data.

Understand how they invest in research and development to stay ahead of quantum threats and their adaptability in data security strategies. Stay informed about these advancements and prepare to transition to quantum-resistant encryption methods as they become available.

Conclusion

The selection of data security vendors should depend on identifying advanced products, evaluating deployment protocols, and assessing the quality of post-deployment support. While crafting robust products is an initial milestone for numerous security firms, the true test lies in their ability to grow an agile and well-prepared team.

This vendor team must be accessible, exhibit acute awareness of the threat landscape, be committed to ongoing research and innovation, and be proactive so that the organizations derive optimal value from their products with minimal disruption and resource expenditure.

We got everything covered at Fortanix. Contact our team now.