Digital security must be present in all sectors of a company

Digital security must pass through all areas of an organization, public or private, and be present in the processes of building new digital tools from its planning. Thus, data protection protocols will be more effective.

“Many platforms did not have security and privacy as principles and incident reports are increasingly reported”, says Michelle Wangham, Research and Development Researcher at RNP (Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa).

Last year, 4.1 million suspicious digital transactions were recorded in Brazil, according to the Indicator of Fraud Attempts by Serasa Experian, a credit information analysis company. The number, the highest in the historical series, which began in 2011, is 16.8% higher than in 2020, when there were 3.5 million attacks.

Cybersecurity was the topic discussed during the seminar Security and Privacy in the Digital Era, promoted by Folha, on Tuesday (19). The event was sponsored by unico, a digital identification solutions company, and was mediated by Raphael Hernandes, a special reporter for the newspaper.

For André Sucupira, responsible for data protection and legal and governance director of Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service), incidents in the virtual environment are inevitable, but organizations must be ready to contain the damage as soon as possible. “We have to be prepared to respond immediately, prevent damage from occurring and ensure that the service returns in the best possible way.”

The opinion is shared by Cynthia Picolo, director of Lapin (Public Policy and Internet Laboratory), a research center on the social, ethical, and legal challenges of digital technologies.
“It is very important to have a well-structured security plan to identify and quantify risks.” After an incident, she indicates that organizations maintain good communication with those who were harmed, explaining what the damage was and how to mitigate it.

She says that digital security shouldn’t just be a concern for those who take care of data intelligence. The entire population must be aware of the ways to protect information. Understanding the best security practices, being suspicious of strange links, in addition to using more robust authentication features in applications are some of the measures to reduce the vulnerability.
Data from Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks), released in 2021, show that only 37% of Brazilians know “very well” or “more or less well” the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) and 86% of respondents are afraid of being victims of digital fraud.

André Sucupira, from Serpro, states that the LGPD brought the possibility for citizens to follow the flow of their data and brought the debate on privacy to the table of leaders of large and small organizations.

But the population still lacks familiarity with the law. He explains that it is important to find out where the data goes, with whom it is shared and how long the information remains on each platform.

Picolo, from Lapin, adds that the dialogue between academia, civil society and public and private sector authorities can positively contribute to the design of public guidelines on digital security. “That way, these policies can be more representative and speak the language of the population,” she says.

Claudio Miceli, a researcher at the Institute of Computational Applications and Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, recalls the importance of training technology professionals, especially with the digitization process that was accelerated during the pandemic.

“With the boom in internet services over the last couple of years and the increased need for IT staff, training has taken a toll,” he says.

For him, the answer lies in investing in continuing education, so professionals can keep up to date on information security protocols.

According to Brasscom (Association of Information and Communication Technology Companies), by September 2021, 123,500 new jobs were created in technology, an increase of 183% over the same period in 2020.

The study indicates that the demand for skilled labor should continue to grow, reaching 797,000 new jobs by 2025. However, with the number of graduates below the necessary, the survey projects an annual deficit of 106,000 professionals.