How Marketers Store and Protect Big Data

Here’s a strange coincidence: marketers have a lot in common with big data. Big data is used to target customers for business, services, and products, and that’s essentially the job of a marketer. Big data is not a tangible thing (a marketer is a person, of course, huge difference there), but rather a way to store and analyze the data that makes it possible for a marketer to be better at his or her job. In order to remain effective, marketers need to protect the data they’re storing. The world is full of data thieves and disaster (natural or otherwise) can destroy on-site backup systems. The bigger data gets, the greater the need for external storage and protection.

How Marketers Store Big Data

Big businesses understand the benefits of using hyper scale computing environments for storing big data. This includes commodity servers with direct-attached storage DAS, Hadoop, NoSQL, Cassandra analytics engines, and PCIe flash storage. Although some marketers, such as those representing massive businesses, will require this superior level of storage, most won’t.

Savvy marketers understand the benefit of keeping costs low, but also the benefit of spending on a worthy cause. Basically, you want to purchase object storage systems for in-house storage and external storage for backing up systems. The most important data should be backed up every night, and for data that is brought from home to work, consider the benefits of secure storage. Secure USB, for example, is FIPS certified and features military grade encryption.

How Marketers Protect Big Data

Protecting your data should be a top priority; not just for you, but also for your customers. They deserve to know the records you’re keeping about them and their businesses are secured.

Encryption

There’s no denying how powerful and important encryption is. In terms of websites, your site should include the HTTPS encryption, which creates a private connection between the site and those visiting. That connection cannot be viewed or modified by a third party. Also, you should ensure your storage, including cloud storage, features impenetrable encryption. Encourage your clients to make similar protection choices. You could even bundle this as a service or upsell with security offerings.

Strong passwords

till think your birthday is a good password? Think again. Hackers love to crack passwords and they’re good at it. Leading software provider Microsoft warns that hackers use many sophisticated methods to collect passwords, such as the offline dictionary attack which is when the hacker uses an automated program to determine passwords based on hashed or encrypted copies of passwords. The silver lining it that even with sophisticated methods, hackers are rarely able to defeat strong passwords. In general, strong passwords are at least six characters long, include both capital and lowercase letters, and special characters.  

Antivirus software, firewalls, and intrusion detection software

There are all sorts of nasty malware out there, but running antivirus software (every day!) will help ensure your data is protected. Moreover, intrusion detection software and firewalls may detect malware before it’s even able to infiltrate your system. Don’t leave your data naked and vulnerable, dress it up in protection. Some of the best protection is very affordable, and things like Windows Defender and Windows Firewall come preloaded with PCs.

Although data is undeniably important, it can grow too big. An IDC study reports that data production doubles every two years, and by 2020 it will reach 44 trillion gigabytes. It’s complicated, but there are too many advantages not to utilize. Marketers use it to create real-time customization for clients, integrate predictive analytics to see more successes, and it can help them gain market insights about all sorts of information. So long as you’re storing it and protecting it with today’s best methods, you should be okay to keep using it to give your marketing strategy greater insight.