The truth about data

Regulatory requirements and our growing dependency on information is making it more important than ever to tackle data integrity. CTO’s, developers and others within IT face extreme pressure to ensure the data they’re responsible for is reliable and secure. It’s no longer sufficient to just think about data availability and security. The success of the business and regulations such as GDPR make it necessary to consider things such as data accuracy and immutability too.

Traditional databases are frequently exposed to risk

Traditional databases are frequently exposed to risk on account of malicious intent, systems and internal error. Given these inherent problems, traditional databases are not always a perfect source of the truth. In recent years, database vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle have responded by building greater levels of security into their flagship products. Encryption, data masking, access control, audit capabilities and policies all have a role to play in database security. But security is a broader concern that extends beyond the domain of the database.

Data security and integrity isn’t someone else’s problem

For developers, security is no longer an afterthought or someone else’s problem. It has to be an integral part of the application’s design and spec. Security checks can be integrated into the DevOps pipeline as is the case with Oracle Developer Cloud. Likewise, GitHub will alert you to security vulnerabilities as I’ve covered here.

The truth about data

The truth about data is that it isn’t always the truth. Steps need to be taken to address this in today’s complex deployment environments which might involve on-premises, cloud and hybrid data silos. Modern architectures often scale across multiple platforms and involve data integration which adds to the complexity. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be taking a closer look at some of the tools that help to keep track of data and ensure it’s tamper proof and compliant with regulations. I will begin next time with a close look at Evident Proof. We will demonstrate how their API can be used by .NET developers to prove their applications are working with a single source of the truth.