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Prevent telecoms data leaks in the field with Kingston IronKey

Keeping data secure in a mobile world

In an increasingly mobile world, telecommunication providers must ensure they offer not only a best-in-class experience for their customers, but also be relied upon to keep their data secure. Cyber attacks are on the rise{{Footnote.A67152}}, and businesses of all sizes are being targeted. Presenting a strong defence against potential breaches is an effective means of deterring cyber criminals.

Particularly for telecom companies, customer information is highly sensitive. GDPR and other regulatory standards mean that nobody in the industry can afford to take the issue lightly, making prevention of data loss paramount in importance.

Challenge

Whilst a lot of customer data is contained within business systems – there is also a need to move data using portable storage. Data in transit is often a point of vulnerability for companies.

For the employees of a major EMEA telecoms company, they needed to have the ability to transfer and store data in a secure manner, whilst also being easy to use – so that unsecure workarounds can be avoided. It is sadly all too common for employees to circumvent security measures via expedient workarounds, even when warned of the potential consequences.

For this and other reasons, any potential solution cannot come at the expense of data loss. Additional layers of protection are needed to mitigate risks – if the worst was to happen.

Solution

IronKey VP50 plugged into a desktop PC

With this in mind, Kingston's Ask an Expert team recommended a solution which was both easy to use yet secure. Our IronKey VP50 was the perfect remedy for an organisation which needed an affordable business-grade security USB drive for data in-transit with 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption.

This, in conjunction with a robust whitelisting process, ensures that only approved drives could access data. All while underpinned with FIPS-197 certification of its encryption process, the VP50 has Brute Force attack protection to limit guessing a password up to 10 times (configurable with optional customisation), with a further admin crypto-erase as the final step in this attack protection. This is a type of security that is not available on software-encrypted drives – Kingston’s drives have always-on encryption that cannot be disabled with strong Brute Force protection.

Given how well the drives secured data, as well as favourable usability for staff members, there was the need for senior management to bring in our most secure business-class drive for their most sensitive company data. As such, the DT4000G2DM was chosen for its extra security layer of FIPS-140-2 Level 3 certification. FIPS-140-2- Level 3 devices not only provide the exceptional hardware encryption algorithms which FIPS-197 devices offer, they also feature advanced physical security measures engineered to frustrate attempts at physical tampering, use, or modification.

In both cases, each product is able to ensure the secure use of USB ports and mitigate use of unsecure workaround processes, through using a Custom Product ID configured by Kingston on their drive; this custom PID allows Endpoint management software to recognise approved USB drives and reject those that do not have this proper identification. Combine this with the DT4000G2DM’s ability to be centrally managed for their most critical data, they had full control and audit of what is being transferred, and by whom, and can lock down if any threats are ever detected. This kind of central control is a significant improvement on the majority of cloud services available.

Thanks to Kingston’s portfolio of IronKey drives as well as customisation and central management options, this high-profile telecommunications company can rest easy. Its data, whether customer or corporate, is protected, and compliant with today’s growing regulatory standards.

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