The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force on May 25, 2018. The protection has been described as the “strictest data protection regulation in history”, according to a report.

While the rapid development of cloud computing and AI technology promotes the development of enterprises, centralized data is exposed to the risks of malicious attacks and hacker penetration. In recent years, there have been a number of data leakage incidents of global well-known companies, which also reflects the new development trend of data security in the new era.

On May 24, Tencent cloud data security expert researcher Dr. Peng Sixiang pointed out in 2018 Tencent “Cloud + future” summit security sub-forum, compliance requirements, privacy threats, quantum computing will be the current data security is facing three challenges, in need of new thinking and pattern to deal with this change. At the same time, Peng Sixiang also shared Tencent’s achievements in protecting user data security in combination with the whole process data protection solution developed by Tencent Cloud — Data Shield.


Dr. Sixiang Peng, Tencent cloud data security expert and researcher

Big data security in the new era faces three challenges:

Compliance requirements, privacy threats, quantum computing

Laws have been developed around the world to address increasingly complex and important information security issues. At present, the EU and China have put forward more specific requirements on the protection of personal information through legislation at almost the same time. China’s Cyber Security Law and THE EU GDPR (General Data Security Regulation) have been issued, striving to provide normative constraints on the security of public and personal information.

In addition, the importance of privacy protection is becoming increasingly prominent at present. On the one hand, while people enjoy the huge dividend brought by big data, more and more of their personal privacy is exposed on the Internet. With the aggravation of harassment attacks, personal privacy protection awareness is also rapidly awakening. Data show that from 2016 to 2018, the average annual growth rate of people’s attention to privacy protection has reached 80%. These crisis awareness comes from frequent and major information leakage events around the world.

Peng Sixiang said, for example, in 2017, 2.5 billion pieces of privacy data were leaked worldwide, an increase of 88% compared to 2016, with an average of 82 pieces of data leaked every second. 65% of enterprises believe that they are facing huge data security risks, and as many as 80% of enterprises have ever had data leakage. Only 1% of the leaked data was encrypted.

More urgently, the “quantum hegemony” caused by the rapid development of quantum technology will also bring huge security risks. According to Peng, quantum computers are as powerful as nuclear weapons are to conventional weapons. Some problems, such as factorization of large numbers and discrete logarithms, are difficult to solve with a quantum computer. Large number decomposition and discrete logarithm are the mathematical basis of RSA and ECC, the asymmetric encryption algorithms widely used in Internet communication security, and Google has developed a 72-bit quantum computer in March 2018. What does that mean? When these commercial quantum computers become available, the current Internet security system, which is widely based on RSA cryptography, will be more easily cracked by quantum computers. The data show that the quantum computer with 20484 qubits only uses 4.8 hours for 4096 bit RSA system, which shows the cracking influence of quantum computing.

Data-centric

Tencent Cloud Data Shield to build the whole process protection scheme

Under the triple challenges, the data security protection of the new era undoubtedly needs a more comprehensive capability plan. At the forum, Peng Sixiang also introduced Tencent Cloud to create a data-centered whole process protection scheme — Tencent Cloud Data Shield, through data audit, privacy protection, threat resistance, quantum encryption and other products to build a one-stop whole process protection system.

In compliance requirements, Peng Sixiang believes that database audit is an important cornerstone. At present, Tencent Cloud monitors and records database operations to meet the requirements of compliance audit, timely detect data access anomalies and risks, and output multi-level alarms and detailed reports to ensure that all data operations can be traced and reviewed. At the same time, database audit with AI capability can find problems more accurately. Tencent cloud original AI black and white dual-engine model makes comprehensive judgment, automatically adapt to user operation characteristics, and the detection rate and accuracy reach the industry high level of 95%.

For privacy protection, Peng Sixiang focuses on the introduction of advanced privacy protection technology. As a common data desensitization tool for enterprise users, Digital shield can realize one-click intelligent desensitization to meet the data desensitization needs of production data used in testing, development, training and big data analysis scenarios. In addition, Tencent Cloud Data Shield’s current anonymous processing, interactive differential privacy framework and PSI algorithm are easy to use, highly compatible and secure, which can meet the security requirements of enterprises in sensitive data use/release scenarios.

It is worth noting that the most important basic means of data protection is data encryption. At present, Tencent Cloud Data Shield integrates a variety of encryption solutions, which can deal with the security challenges brought by quantum computing cracking. The emergence of preestimator computing will seriously affect the security of asymmetric encryption algorithms. Tencent Cloud Digital Shield also launched anti-quantum encryption, which is an encryption algorithm based on hash that can resist the attack of quantum computing.

In addition, Tencent Cloud Data Shield will also integrate anti-quantum encryption algorithm into other data security products. Users can enable anti-quantum encryption algorithm as required to improve the security and reliability of various security products.

Peng sixiang finally said that the rapid development of science and technology in the Internet era, with AI, quantum computing and other cutting-edge technologies become a reality, creating a secure cloud ecosystem is becoming more and more challenging. At present, Tencent has not only established the Tencent Security Joint laboratory consisting of seven professional laboratories, but also established a cloud security service alliance with a number of enterprises, forming the ability of joint operations, providing users with more secure data solutions, and continuously building a more secure cloud ecosystem.