-: All data and information 2 2
has a lifecycle associated with it. 3 3
The data life cycle is the entire period of time 4 4
the data exists within your systems. 5 5
Data goes through six main stages throughout its life cycle. 6 6
From creation, to usage, to sharing, to storage, 7 7
to archival, to destruction. 8 8
First, we have data creation. 9 9
Data can be created in your system 10 10
whenever it's acquired, entered, or captured. 11 11
Data acquisition occurs when existing data 12 12
that's produced outside of your system 13 13
is imported automatically into your system. 14 14
For example, if I create an email and I sent to you, 15 15
your system has acquired that data 16 16
and began its life cycle within your systems. 17 17
Data entry is going to occur when information 18 18
is manually typed in your system 19 19
by personnel within your organization. 20 20
For example, if you open up a word document 21 21
and you start taking notes while watching this lesson, 22 22
you're going to be performing data entry. 23 23
Now data capture occurs when data is generated by a device 24 24
used in your organization. 25 25
For example, if your routers and switches 26 26
are constantly generating log files, 27 27
those are a form of data capture. 28 28
Second, we have data use. 29 29
Now data uses the phase of the life cycle 30 30
where data is put to work to achieve some purpose 31 31
within your organization. 32 32
If you're viewing, processing, modifying, 33 33
or saving the data, you are currently performing data use. 34 34
Every time a critical piece of data is opened and accessed, 35 35
there should be an audit trail that maintains a log 36 36
of who accessed the data and when. 37 37
Third, we have data sharing. 38 38
Now, data sharing occurs when a user 39 39
makes the data available to somebody else 40 40
outside of the organization. 41 41
For example, when I began recording this video, 42 42
only my staff had access to this video 43 43
so we could create this course and all the subtitles 44 44
for this particular lesson. 45 45
But once we were at a point where we want you 46 46
to be able to see this video, 47 47
we had to share it with other organizations and people 48 48
outside of Dion training. 49 49
When data is shared, it's important that you 50 50
put the right protections in place 51 51
based on who should be able to access the data being shared 52 52
and where that data should be shared to. 53 53
Fourth, we have data storage. 54 54
Now, data storage occurs when the data 55 55
is not being actively used. 56 56
Every piece of data needs to be stored for later retrieval, 57 57
processing, use or transfer, 58 58
but while it isn't actively being used, 59 59
it's going to have to be stored someplace. 60 60
Now the data may be stored as a digital file, 61 61
such as a word document or a single item 62 62
within a larger database, 63 63
depending on the type of data 64 64
and the protections it requires. 65 65
Data that is going to be stored 66 66
is going to be placed into an area 67 67
that is instantly accessible when needed by your users. 68 68
Fifth, we have data archival. 69 69
Now data archival is the copying of data to an environment 70 70
where it's going to be stored in case it's going to be needed 71 71
in an active production environment again later on. 72 72
For example, your organization might conduct nightly backups 73 73
of all of your servers and put that onto a backup tape 74 74
or a cloud-based glacial server. 75 75
In that case, the data won't be instantly available anymore, 76 76
but your organization can recover to it and restore from it 77 77
if they need to, taking those from the archives 78 78
and putting them back onto your production servers 79 79
in the case of an emergency or an investigation. 80 80
Six, we have data destruction. 81 81
At some point, the data you've created used, shared, stored, 82 82
and archived is going to be no longer valuable to you. 83 83
At that point, it's going to be time to destroy the data 84 84
and bring it to an end of its useful life. 85 85
After all, we can't keep all of our data indefinitely 86 86
because we're going to end up running out of storage space, 87 87
or it's going to simply cost us too much to buy more storage 88 88
space for all of that data that has no useful purpose. 89 89
This destruction could be as simple 90 90
as running a delete command on a server, 91 91
or it could be overriding that area of a hard disk 92 92
with zeros, or you could physically destroy a tape backup 93 93
by shredding that tape. 94 94
The exact method here isn't really important, 95 95
but the concept is that that data 96 96
has to go through a lifecycle 97 97
and that's what we're concerned with here. 98 98
Remember, all data moves through this life cycle 99 99
from creation to use, to sharing, to storage, 100 100
to archiving, to destruction. 101 101
Now that we understand the basic data life cycle, 102 102
we need to discuss the concept of a data inventory. 103 103
Now, a data inventory serves as a single source of truth 104 104
within your organization. 105 105
A data inventory is going to be used to provide 106 106
instant insight into all the sources of data 107 107
that an organization has access to, 108 108
what information is being collected by these sources, 109 109
where that data is being stored, 110 110
and what will ultimately happen to that data. 111 111
This is also referred to as a data mapping 112 112
in some organizations. 113 113
So why is it important to conduct a data inventory 114 114
or data mapping? 115 115
Well, if we're going to be responsible for protecting 116 116
our organization's data, 117 117
then it's really important that we understand 118 118
exactly where all that data is located. 119 119
Now this may sound easy, 120 120
but these days it's actually quite challenging 121 121
because we have data located all over the place. 122 122
Do you have data on your company's shared drive 123 123
and email servers? 124 124
Well, most likely you do, 125 125
and you probably have full control over those servers, 126 126
but there's a lot more of your data out there as well. 127 127
In my own company, we have data in our accounting software 128 128
and our credit card processing software. 129 129
Both of these are software-as-a-service solutions. 130 130
Now we also have some of our data 131 131
in our learning management system 132 132
and other parts of our data 133 133
in our customer relationship management system. 134 134
We use tools like Slack, Office 365, and Google workspace, 135 135
and all of these have our data too. 136 136
So I only just scratched the surface here, 137 137
but I've already listed out nine different places 138 138
where our data resides and we're a really small company. 139 139
This is why conducting a data inventory or data mapping 140 140
is truly important here because once you know 141 141
where all your data is, 142 142
you can then begin to determine how you're going to secure 143 143
that data and protect that data across 144 144
all of these disparate storage arrays 145 145
that you've now created. 146 146
Now, once you've identified all of this data, 147 147
you need to figure out how to ensure its integrity 148 148
is also being maintained. 149 149
This is known as data integrity management. 150 150
Now data integrity is all about protecting data 151 151
against improper maintenance, modification or alteration. 152 152
And it also includes data authenticity. 153 153
Integrity has to do with the accuracy of information, 154 154
including its authenticity and trustworthiness. 155 155
Now information with low integrity concerns 156 156
may be considered unimportant to your business 157 157
because it doesn't have a precise operational function, 158 158
and therefore it's not necessary 159 159
to vigorously check that for errors. 160 160
Information with high integrity concerns though 161 161
are considered to be crucial and critical to your functions, 162 162
and therefore they must be accurate in order to prevent 163 163
negative impacts to your organization's activities. 164 164
For example, if you're dealing 165 165
with your accounting software, 166 166
you likely need to ensure it has a high level of integrity 167 167
because you don't want to have a customer's balance 168 168
saying that they owe you $10,000 169 169
when they only owe you $1,000. 170 170
That would be a big problem and due to a lack of integrity 171 171
because it's changing those numbers. 172 172
Therefore you want to build out your data protection plans 173 173
for your accounting systems and implement things 174 174
like journaling and hashing of your data 175 175
to ensure the integrity remains intact at all times. 176 176
Conversely, if you're dealing with some kind of data 177 177
that doesn't require high integrity, 178 178
you might choose not to implement 179 179
these more expensive controls. 180 180
This is ultimately a decision that's going to be made 181 181
using your risk management and considering the cost 182 182
versus the benefits of adding these additional controls 183 183
to each of your data processing systems. 184 184
Finally, we need to discuss data storage 185 185
a bit more in depth here. 186 186
By far, the most common place 187 187
we're going to store our data to is a RAID. 188 188
A redundant array of inexpensive disks, or RAID, 189 189
is a hard drive technology that allows data 190 190
to be written to a logical partition 191 191
that's going to be spread 192 192
across multiple physical disk drives. 193 193
This ensures that even if a single disk drive in the array 194 194
fails, that data is still going to be available by restoring 195 195
it from the RAID itself, 196 196
instead of having to restore it from a tape backup. 197 197
Now, there are four main types of RAID arrays 198 198
that you should be familiar with. 199 199
RAID zero, which is referred to as disk striping. 200 200
RAID one, which is called disk mirroring. 201 201
RAID three, which is called byte level data striping 202 202
with dedicated parody. 203 203
And RAID five, which is block level data striping 204 204
with distributed parody. 205 205
With a raid zero or disk striping, 206 206
this is going to involve a minimum of two physical disks. 207 207
In this configuration, half of the data 208 208
is stored on one of the physical drives, 209 209
while the other half is stored on the other drive. 210 210
This increases the responsiveness and the delivery 211 211
of the data store on this kind of RAID, 212 212
but there is no added redundancy to this data. 213 213
If either of these physical drives fail, 214 214
all of the data is going to be lost. 215 215
Now, if we want to have some redundancy, 216 216
we can move to a RAID one. 217 217
RAID one or disk mirroring, 218 218
places the importance of redundancy 219 219
over speed in this array. 220 220
In this type of configuration, 221 221
you need to have at least two physical disks, 222 222
and you're going to have a copy of the data written 223 223
to both disks at the same time. 224 224
This provides an always ready and available backup 225 225
in case either of those individual drives fail. 226 226
The next type we have is known as a RAID three 227 227
or byte level data striping with a dedicated parody drive 228 228
and this uses a minimum of three disks. 229 229
In this type of configuration, 230 230
a portion of your data is placed in the first drive 231 231
and another portion is placed on the second drive. 232 232
Then we use a mathematical algorithm to calculate a parody 233 233
that's going to be stored on the third drive. 234 234
If a single drive fails, 235 235
then the parody can be used to recalculate the values 236 236
that were stored on one of the drives that failed 237 237
once we put in a new drive and we rebuild the array. 238 238
This allows us to rebuild itself very quickly and provide 239 239
data to our users in no time at all. 240 240
Next, we have a RAID five. 241 241
Now RAID five is the most commonly used RAID. 242 242
It is known as a block level data striping 243 243
with distributed parody. 244 244
In this array, a minimum of three drives is also required. 245 245
When the data stored on this array, 246 246
a piece of the data is placed on each of the drives 247 247
and the parody is also stored on those drives. 248 248
Instead of reserving a single drive 249 249
for all the parody storage, 250 250
we're going to have data and parody equally distributed 251 251
across all three drives. 252 252
This type of array is very popular 253 253
because we can replace any single drive 254 254
without having to shut down the server 255 255
and this allows operations to continue 256 256
while we're rebuilding a failed drive. 257 257
Now RAIDs can be implemented 258 258
using either software or hardware. 259 259
Now it's cheaper to use a software-based solution, 260 260
but hardware-based solutions will operate faster 261 261
for most environments. 262 262
Another storage option we have is known 263 263
as storage area networks or SANs 264 264
and these are very common in our larger enterprise networks. 265 265
A SAN provides high capacity storage 266 266
by connecting storage devices, 267 267
using a high-speed private network 268 268
that is going to be interconnected 269 269
by storage specific switches. 270 270
This is usually going to be handled 271 271
by a fiber channel network. 272 272
SANs are going to be great for their scalability 273 273
and high availability, 274 274
but they're quite expensive to produce and to procure 275 275
and they require a high level of skill 276 276
to maintain these things. 277 277
These days, 278 278
a lot of our data is also going to be stored in the cloud. 279 279
This can be inside of a database, 280 280
a block-level storage, or a binary large object 281 281
known as a blob. 282 282
Regardless of where we end up storing our data, 283 283
It's always important for us to have a backup 284 284
and recovery plan for that data because all forms of storage 285 285
are subject to outages and data loss eventually.