A cursory glance at the image above this article will give readers some idea as to the nature and scale of the immense server farms required to power a data giant, like the social network Facebook. The photograph depicts just one of many, of course, and doesn’t show any supporting infrastructure.

It would be naive to think that such provisions come free. But most Facebook users probably think the platform is just that.

The press has been keen to describe the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica situation as a “scandal”; but rather than a scandal, perhaps we should consider the revelations (that Facebook sells data to whoever it pleases) as merely an exposition of a truth few people acknowledge.

It’s not just the extent of private data being shared for cash that causes alarm, but also that there’s an enormous amount of sensitive information exposed by accident, not design, every single day. A report recently revealed that over 12 petabytes of publicly-available, exposed data was found (among other sources) from:

• Unprotected FTP servers
• SMB services broadcasting over the Internet
• Badly configured websites
• Exposed NAS drives
• Unprotected AWS S3 buckets.

So what is causing this naivety around data protection, unprotected communications, and the potential loss of data, which even the most innocent of activity can put us at risk every time we go online?

Adequately protecting data exchange, at a fundamental level, is a complex business. It falls to organizations, such as NTT Communications and NTT Security, whose solutions bring together communications and security to ensure proper levels of data protection, compliance and cybersecurity. Adequately integrating security into digital transformation projects early on is essential as companies increasingly deploy cloud-based services and begin Internet of Things (IoT) rollouts.

Using a product like NTT Communications’ SD-WAN, for example, means all communications are encrypted and travel privately and securely on the company’s 75 cloud-based PoPs (points of presence) across the globe. The software-defined unified communication provision enables interchange of sensitive data, and lets customers choose their own services, including options like MPLS, VOIP, direct Internet access, and broadband.

On-demand secure networks can be created by a PC or smartphone app, or can be controlled and instigated by on-premises equipment. As part of a more extensive, encrypted virtual private network, the NTT Communications business portal can be used to make additions or changes quickly to secure network configurations.

By encrypting communications, users are (unknowingly) hiding even the most trivial of day-to-day interchange. Why is this important? As the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica situation showed us, it is the collation of smaller data snippets into a more substantial whole (such as voter profiles in that particular case) that becomes an issue.

NTT Communications, bakes its security layer into its platform, so users are as unaware that they are protected as they are of the mechanisms of public key exchange, handshaking, encryption algorithms and so on. Companies deploying new technologies need to ensure security measures are considered from day one of the planning phase – and NTT Communications and NTT Security are there to partner for strategic advantage in secure communications.

The class-leading communications solutions empower organizations to communicate and collaborate on a range of platforms suitable for different types of activity: from messaging and video conferencing to file sharing and distributed telephony. But if transformation projects to unified platforms are undertaken without the right security team on board, 60 percent of digital businesses will suffer major service failures in the next two years – according to Gartner. NTT Security’s Risk:Value report shows that only 36 percent of respondents in Singapore would consider all their organization’s critical data, and all of their organization’s data more generally, to be completely secure.

Delivering improvements in productivity and collaboration levels, the offerings from NTT Communications form a pay-as-you-use platform that develops the double benefits of high security and powerful, seamless communication.

To learn more about how to secure your communications services with NTT Communications and its end-to-end world-class cybersecurity, email today. From initial evaluation through to on-going protection, this company is your full-service partner in the digital age.