Technology has advanced our world in countless ways. Every day we bank, shop, conduct business and exchange photos and messages with family and friends online. While digital devices and services offer great convenience, they also pose risks to our data and privacy as the separation between our offline and online lives converges. Data Privacy Week, spanning January 24-28, serves as an important reminder of the importance of protecting our privacy and safeguarding personal information.

There’s a new acronym in town: SSE, which stands for Security Service Edge. If this looks mighty similar to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), it’s because they are closely related.

Regardless of the industry or organization, corporate email is the main cause of unauthorized and accidental data leaks. Employees are constantly sending emails to external parties that may contain sensitive company data, personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets and other intellectual property.

In some ways, IT teams had a great life in the early 2000s. Data was stored inside data centers and accessed through known ingress and egress points like a castle with a limited number of gates. As a result, organizations had control over exactly whom and what devices could access company data. This is no longer the case. With users accessing cloud applications with whatever networks and devices are at their disposal, those defense mechanisms have become inadequate.

As a major financial hub in Asia and globally, Singapore is very aware of the challenges facing the financial industry, especially the accelerated digital transformation that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the sector’s increased exposure to cloud technology, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has released a guideline to address cybersecurity risks associated with the adoption of public clouds.

With just about everything delivered from the cloud these days, employees can now collaborate and access what they need from anywhere and on any device. While this newfound flexibility has changed the way we think about productivity, it has also created new cybersecurity challenges for organizations. Historically, enterprise data was stored inside data centers and guarded by perimeter-based security tools.