Data breaches will continue to rise.
The increasing number of hackers breaching private data is in the foremost thoughts of every business and consumer today. From millions of credit cards and personal records stolen at Target, Staples, Home Depot, and TJX Retail Stores to private pictures ‘Snaps’ you thought were secure as previously advertised from Snap Chat.
Now a new cyber attack on Sony Pictures is apparently in retaliation to prevent the release of The Interview, a comedy about the attempted assassination of the North Korean president. The cyber attackers have done everything in their power to inflict damage on Sony Pictures and according to a US official the attack resonated from North Korea. The cyber attackers released Sony Picture’s employee records, private company emails, commercial music, films, personal financial information and private employee records. As a result, Sony Pictures and three of the largest movie chains have decided to scale back and only allow for a limited release of The Interview in a small number of theaters and online outlets. The estimated cost of this cyber attack on Sony is estimated in the millions.
How does this relate to syncing data? As a consumer, government entity, SMB or any large corporation you should work to limit the number of locations where data is stored within your private network and online applications. Storing data temporarily, even for brief amounts of time can still make your data susceptible to cyber theft, as was the case with Snap Chat private photos.
When syncing data across multiple systems, most platforms today necessitate storing your private business and customer data in order to achieve successful data synchronization between multiple systems. The platform may also provide additional tools to make changes to your data before transferring the data to its destination. By storing your sensitive data in a middleware or master data management (MDM) application, you have created another possible point-of-access for a cyber attack.
If your goal is to sync data and not manage data in a middleware application, then introducing another point of data storage can result in possible data breaches and data integrity problems. Just Google ‘Amazon UK glitch’ where Amazon’s UK customers received an early Christmas gift and were able to purchase 1000s of items on Amazon for a just a penny. Unfortunately, Amazon UK sellers were astonished about this inadvertent fire sale of their products and had to take huge losses for products that had already shipped. It’s hard enough to keep up with data management and security for your local network and online applications, let alone the possibility of another glitch in middleware applications creating unapproved changes to your data.
Kosmos eSync synchronizes data without storing data in the middle.
With Kosmos eSync customers maintain data in the application they choose (ERP, POS, Accounting, E-commerce Shopping Cart, CRM, etc.) and there is no requirement to manage and store data in a middleware or MDM application. If your goal is to synchronize data, then there is no need to add labor costs and introduce the potential for instability by managing data in the middle. With eSync, your data is securely transferred and synchronized from one system to the other without any unnecessary data storage pit stops along the way. Managing your data in a middleware application instead of the primary data source can introduce a host of problems, including data integrity issues, as mentioned in the Amazon UK penny glitch.
Kosmos eSync can also be configured to transfer data to fit the unique needs of your business. If the data source is incomplete, your data can still be mapped and transferred to its destination. If more information is required to publish your data to its destination then a custom rule or condition can be applied to update the data to meet the needs of the destination system. For example, a) incomplete product information can be combined with another data source and automatically entered into an e-commerce shopping cart, where further updates can be applied to the data by your marketing team; b) if an attribute, such as weight has a zero value or is unavailable, then a default value can be automatically entered into the system of your choice; and c) online orders can be automatically entered as a receipt into your accounting system during any state of the order process. With Kosmos eSync businesses can easily configure how data will flow between multiple systems and since there is no requirement to manage and store data in a middleware application, you can be sure that your data will always arrive at its destination as originally intended.