With all the scary statistics out there about the growing data security threats in the enterprise world, it’s easy to lose sight of a more optimistic fact: Enterprise data security is getting better — and organizations everywhere are building smarter data loss protection programs. Each year, the Code42 Evolutionary Awards celebrate the smart, innovative and just-plain-cool ways that organizations are protecting their data. This year, we recognized 10 organizations for their extraordinary innovation in data loss protection. Let’s take a look at the 2019 Evolutionary Award winners:
Evolutionary Award: BAYADA Home Health Care
BAYADA Home Health Care won the namesake Evolutionary Award for completely evolving the way their company secures data, protects IP, and enables users. Their data security journey began with safeguarding training videos in the cloud for their mobile workforce, then expanded to protecting data from the threat of lost and stolen laptops. BAYADA’s current project is to ensure that their proprietary and regulated data is secured and monitored for loss and proper usage. “Protecting data is impossible if you don’t have comprehensive visibility into where your data is, and to accomplish this you need the right tools,” says Craig Petrosky, director of Desktop Equipment Services for BAYADA. “That’s why it was critical for us to implement a solution that provides near real-time detection and the ability to respond to cases of data loss, leakage, misuse, or potential exposure.”
Guardian Award: Cisco
Cisco won the Guardian Award for a security team that creatively and effectively fends off an array of threats —from ransomware to malicious insider actors — to protect its valuable data. Cisco has developed countless data protection workflows by using Splunk to develop actionable insights about how data may be infiltrated and exfiltrated from the organization. “In today’s data landscape, it is important to have a solid data collection agent, one that offers insight into where data is, where it’s moving, and where it’s been. A tool that can offer this is an invaluable tool for Insider Threat investigations” says Kevin Currie, investigator CSIRT of Cisco.
Rookie Award: Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
Ironwood Pharmaceuticals won the Rookie Award for an organization that has successfully deployed a new software product within the past year. Deploying new software is never a small feat, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals did so with a de-merger on the horizon, knowing that they would soon have to split their deployment in two. “When our organization was going through the de-merger, we needed a simple and flexible solution to ensure our data is protected,” says Lian Barry, manager, end user support for Ironwood. “We found a solution that has provided constant assurance that our data is protected throughout this period of increased organizational change.
Harmony Award: MacDonald-Miller
MacDonald-Miller won the Harmony Award for striking a balance between data protection and empowering employees to be productive and collaborative in order to deliver results to the company’s bottom line. Two of MacDonald-Miller’s top security priorities are that users never experience downtime from data loss, and that valuable data is not leaving with departing employees. “Our data is our competitive advantage,” said Eddie Anderson, technical business analyst at MacDonald-Miller. “It’s critical for us to protect data from loss, leak and theft, while enabling our employees to collaborate and work at the speed of business.”
Evangelist Award: David Chiang, MACOM
David Chiang, IT system engineer of MACOM, won the Evangelist Award for an individual with expertise in data loss protection who sets industry best practices and actively shares them with peers. Chiang’s passion for software deployment and systems integration began with an intern project and has evolved into deep expertise on protecting data in the midst of a digital transformation. “Digital transformations are exciting, but they can put data at an elevated risk,” says Chiang. “It’s important for organizations to take steps to protect their most important asset — their data — during these times.”
Atlas Award: Proofpoint
Proofpoint won the Atlas Award, honoring an organization for deploying and protecting an expansive global workforce. As the Proofpoint organization grew quickly through M&A, business continuity and user productivity were top priorities set by the CIO. “With help from professional services, we were able to quickly go from nothing to a fully deployed data collection agent that can support our global workforce, ensuring we never experience data loss. We had a very successful deployment and it proved ROI within four months.” says Brock Chapin, systems admin for Proofpoint.
Trailblazer Award: Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric won the Trailblazer Award for improving a critical workflow or process for its organization. The company developed a custom app, used as part of their computer depot service, which collects and recovers data — in order to streamline, expedite and standardize the service. The results: time saved for technicians, reduced end-user downtime and improved user experiences. “As anyone in IT knows, positive user experience is critical to the effectiveness of any technical program. Our custom app not only provides that user experience, but it also lets them get back to work faster through decreased down time,” says Austin Joe, end point solutions senior engineer, enterprise IT of Schneider Electric. “We couldn’t be happier with the results.”
We’re in this together
Join us in giving a virtual round of applause for these successful and innovative organizations. These examples not only represent major achievements for the organizations themselves, but the overall progress of the collective community of enterprise data security professionals. As your security team tackles emerging and evolving data loss challenges, don’t forget that you have a powerful resource in your Code42 peer network. From looking to examples like the customers highlighted here as inspiration or blueprints for your own initiatives, to consulting with other data security professionals to get answers, advice and guidance, we encourage you to leverage this valuable connection to some of the enterprise security world’s best minds and biggest thinkers. While the details differ, we face the same threats, manage the same challenges and share the same goals. We’re in this together.