Here's a simple fact of life at the start of the 21st Century.
Every bit of unencrypted data, no matter where it is stored, has already been compromised or soon will be. Lost to theft, leak, or incompetence.
It doesn't matter how elaborate your procedures are. It doesn't matter how smart your techies are. It doesn't matter how careful you are.
There isn't an organization in the world that can truly protect it through new procedures, background checks, elaborate firewalls, new access controls, etc.
Anyone who says otherwise is a fool (fire them and save some money).
Even the NSA, the most secure organization in the world, has lost reams of critical data.
IF they can lose that much data, any company, agency, or person you do business with can or will lose similar amounts (or they already have).
Unfortunately, there's not a fix for this problem. It's only going to get worse.
Fortunately, there is a way to survive in the meantime. It's the approach the smartest people I know are using.
What is it?
- Figure out what is important. There's only a small amount of critical data. Nominally protect the rest (most of it), but assume that it may be stolen, leaked, or spied upon at some point, so be prepared for that.
- Encrypt the data that is important. Decentralize the encryption. Central controls and backdoors are vulnerabilities. Refresh that encryption as time goes on.
- Shard all of the data. Break it up and spread it out over numerous computers (do it in a redundant way).
PS: Check out the EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard for some insight on the best way to secure you communications. David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the UK, and his ilk in the US/EU want to prevent us from using encryption to protect ourselves.
PPS: A good way to avoid having to protect data? Be transparent. Run your organization in a transparent way. If you do that, there's nothing to steal.