Explain The Failure To Secure Sensitive Data

3.3 Failure to Secure Sensitive Data
Many researchers have been concerned about the security of sensitive data. There are a lot of improvement and evolution of technologies in internal auditing. First of all, sensitive data is information that must be protected from unauthorized access to safeguard the privacy or security of an individual or organization. There are three main types of sensitive data such as personal information, business information and classified information. Sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) is data that can be traced back to an individual and that, if disclosed, could result in harm to that person. Examples of PII includes biometric data, medical information, personally identifiable financial information (PIFI) and unique identifiers such as passport or Social Security numbers. Second type of sensitive data is business information. Sensitive business information includes anything that poses a risk to the company in question if discovered by a competitor or the general public. For example trade secrets,
Auditors have access to an organization’s financial, sales and distribution, customer and supplier records. Activities such as collection of data relating to the customer base of a retail company could be sold to competitors. There are a lot of information technology (IT) software and hardware have been used in auditing to help auditors to store data and information. One of today’s most exciting computing paradigm shift in information technology is cloud computing. Major challenge to adopt cloud infrastructure is to secure sensitive data. Other than cloud computing, there are many manual and electronic records that fails to secure sensitive data. The internal audit team is exposed to the risks around data security and privacy that it examines for its