Data Security

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Data Security Mean?

Data security refers to protective digital privacy measures that are applied to prevent unauthorized access to computers, databases and websites. Data security also protects data from corruption. Data security is an essential aspect of IT for organizations of every size and type.

Advertisements

Data security is also known as information security (IS) or computer security.

Techopedia Explains Data Security

Examples of data security technologies include backups, data masking and data erasure. A key data security technology measure is encryption, where digital data, software/hardware, and hard drives are encrypted and therefore rendered unreadable to unauthorized users and hackers.

One of the most commonly encountered methods of practicing data security is the use of authentication. With authentication, users must provide a password, code, biometric data, or some other form of data to verify identity before access to a system or data is granted.

Data security is also very important for health care records, so health advocates and medical practitioners in the U.S. and other countries are working toward implementing electronic medical record (EMR) privacy by creating awareness about patient rights related to the release of data to laboratories, physicians, hospitals and other medical facilities.

At a domestic level, password managers encrypt password vaults, and many also include encrypted cloud file storage.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.