Enterprise Security vs Cybersecurity (How It Works For Developers)

With digital files and content so widespread in the modern age, security and cyber security often arise for individuals who want to safeguard their personal information and maintain privacy. This is especially true for enterprises, as confidentiality leaks would be disastrous for the organization. Appropriate ways to safely secure critical data and be in compliance with legal regulations on storing it are the backbone of any large organization.

As such, practice in enterprise security architecture and cybersecurity has to be well documented. Understanding the basics and foundation of how enterprises design their security architecture, cybersecurity, and information security, as well as the differences, is crucial to an organization's longevity.

This article will briefly compare enterprise security against cybersecurity and information security. We'll review the basics and relevant methods and practices and introduce libraries and software that help safeguard the confidentiality of the organization's data.

Understanding Enterprise Security

Generally, enterprise security refers to the various technologies, methods, and tactics organizations use to preserve and withhold data against unauthorized use. Information security professionals, or more specifically, information security analysts, are at the forefront of this aspect within organizations, designing enterprise security architecture for computer systems. This ranges from how enterprises store user data, such as usernames and passwords, using salt and hashed tables, to how an organization registers unique metadata or has methods to check whether the data stored is tampered with. Furthermore, enterprises often have physical security measures against unauthorized access and ways to prevent malicious users from accessing critical data or disrupting the organization's services.

One such example is a DDoS attack, where a malicious user attempts to make many requests to the service quickly. The main goal is to turn off the organization's services through a sheer volume of requests, rendering other customers unable to use the service and crashing the application. The standard solution to this issue is to have a rate-limiting library to enforce the number of requests allowed from a specific IP address. After a certain number of requests are sent from the same IP address, the IP address can no longer send any request, and the server will return either a 403 Forbidden or 404 Authorization Required response.

Aside from attacks over the internet, organizations must also ensure the enterprise security architecture secures ways to block physical access to important sites such as data servers from breaching data attempts.

Another common occurrence is phishing, social engineering, or other malware attacks through employees' emails.

A common pitfall for social engineering is for a malicious attacker to send an email mimicking a trusted site to obtain the password and username of the organization's employees. The attacker would then steal data from the company, masquerading as the employee, resulting in a data breach.

Overall, enterprise security is a broad term that doesn't only cover cyber threats from organizations. When dealing with attackers, they must also consider physical and social engineering threats. Furthermore, they must comply with the data storage regulations of the country in which they reside and ensure all data storage practices comply.

Cybersecurity: A Key Aspect of Enterprise Security

As mentioned above, enterprise security is a general term that covers all aspects of attempts to access confidential data from services and systems. It also involves how an organization designs and implements its computer system, network security, and security solutions.

Cybersecurity is a subset of enterprise security that specifically covers digital data breaches and ways to mitigate and protect against them. One such example is the DDoS attack mentioned above and its basic solution.

Cybersecurity also enforces ways organizations deal with fraudulent data and forgery. Common pitfalls for forgery include unsigned PDF legal documents to another party in an attempt to gain information; as such, organizations would usually have their own set of unique signatures and metadata attached to confidential documents to avoid this pitfall.

Furthermore, cybersecurity awareness training is essential for employees who aren't on the technical teams, as they can be victims of social engineering.

In the following section, let's explore the scenario mentioned above in more detail. Let's examine how an organization would use third-party security software to safeguard and redact information on its PDFs.

Overall Differences Between Enterprise Security vs Cybersecurity

In essence, enterprise security encapsulates everything related to security for organizations, whether physical, digital, or even security awareness training. An organization should have security controls and countermeasures against all threats and scenarios to minimize damage in case of a security breach.

Meanwhile, cybersecurity and information security are solely focused on digital security. This includes security training on common tactics such as phishing, but they are more focused on protecting data and services than physical threats from organizations. Now, let's look at some solutions that organizations could use for cybersecurity.

IronSecureDoc: The PDF Security & Compliance Server

Companies would want a PDF Security and Compliance Server since it enables them to efficiently protect sensitive information, meet regulatory requirements, and ensure document authenticity. By providing tools for redacting and encrypting data, certifying documents with digital signatures, and complying with standards like PDF/A and PDF/UA, businesses can safeguard confidential content while ensuring accessibility and long-term archiving. An intuitive REST API that can be hosted locally or in the cloud offers flexibility, seamless integration, and automation in managing document security, which is crucial for industries with strict compliance needs like finance, healthcare, and legal sectors.

IronSecureDoc is the perfect solution, as it covers and meets security, legal legislation, and more requirements with intuitive APIs, flexibility, and stability.

Example

Let's refer to the example above and examine how a company might redact confidential information on their PDFs through a secure server to ensure the document is digitally secured.

For a more visually appealing example, we will use Swagger docs to simulate how a developer would redact important information from the PDF, such as names and dates.

Setting things up

1. Set up the latest IronSecureDoc docker file on Windows by following the instructions.
2. After setting up the docker image of IronSecureDoc, head to http://localhost:8080/swagger/index.html and access the Swagger docs.
3. Click on the POST request for redacting text, /v1/document-services/pdfs/redact-regular-expression.
4. Click on Try it out and input the required parameters to obtain a modified version of your PDF with the redacted regular expression.
5. Click Download file afterward to obtain the modified PDF with the redacted regular expression.

Input

Example

Using Swagger, we will redact all dates in the YYYY-MM-DD format with regular expressions. We will redact the dates, classify them as confidential, and draw a black box over them.

Here's what to input on the Swagger Doc.

The code below is the actual curl request sent to the server.

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8080/v1/document-services/pdfs/redact-regular-expression' \
  -H 'accept: */*' \
  -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
  -F 'pdf_file=@About Iron Software.pdf;type=application/pdf' \
  -F 'regular_expression="\\b\\d{4}-(?:0?[1-9]|1[0-2])-(?:0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\\b"' \
  -F 'draw_black_box=true'

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8080/v1/document-services/pdfs/redact-regular-expression' \
  -H 'accept: */*' \
  -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
  -F 'pdf_file=@About Iron Software.pdf;type=application/pdf' \
  -F 'regular_expression="\\b\\d{4}-(?:0?[1-9]|1[0-2])-(?:0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\\b"' \
  -F 'draw_black_box=true'

The POST request was sent using the Swagger Docs.

http://localhost:8080/v1/document-services/pdfs/redact-regular-expression?draw_black_box=true&regular_expression=\\b\\d{4}-(?:0?[1-9]|1[0-2])-(?:0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\\b

Output

In the process above, we uploaded the file that we wish to modify and added the regular expression to redact all dates in the format of YYYY-MM-DD, as shown above. When you download the file from the request again, the critical dates are redacted and blocked in the output.

This is one way that organizations can use safe and secure third-party software to safeguard their documents and information should they need to maintain confidentiality.

Enterprise Security vs Cybersecurity

Based on the information above, let's do a final overview of the main difference between enterprise security and cybersecurity and how they are implemented in a short bullet point list.

Scope

• Enterprise Security: Broad, encompassing physical, digital, and social engineering threats.

• Cybersecurity: Focused exclusively on protecting digital data and systems.

Threats addressed

• Enterprise Security: Manages cyber threats and physical access (e.g., securing data centers).

• Cybersecurity: Handles digital threats like malware, phishing, DDoS attacks, and data breaches.

Compliance

• Enterprise Security: Ensures adherence to physical and digital security practices and regulations.

• Cybersecurity: Focuses more on compliance with digital security standards (e.g., GDPR, ISO 27001).

Basic Solutions

• Enterprise Security: Uses broader strategies, including physical security, employee training, and infrastructure security.

• Cybersecurity: Involves firewalls, encryption, secure software such as IronSecureDoc, and anti-malware solutions.

Employees training

• Enterprise Security: Covers awareness of physical and digital risks (e.g., social engineering).

• Cybersecurity: Emphasizes technical training to prevent digital vulnerabilities and phishing attacks.

Conclusion

Enterprise security and cybersecurity are two related but distinct fields essential for protecting digital assets. While enterprise security covers all aspects of physical or digital safeguarding information within the organization, cybersecurity focuses solely on the digital elements and ways to defend and safeguard information. Understanding the difference between the two is crucial when developing an effective strategy to combat malware and malicious attacks.

Organizations can protect their digital assets and prevent data breaches by implementing best practices and employing third-party secure software such as IronSecureDoc to sign and redact information. Making a clear decision on security software is crucial, as the third-party software has to meet all the criteria of the organization's security practices and legal compliances.

Besides the redact information example from above, IronSecureDoc also offers modes of operation that allow developers to redact, sign, and edit their documents through the secure server. This removes the need for the organization to reinvent the wheel and set up its own, as IronSecureDoc can do it all.

For enterprises interested, the IronSecureDoc offers a trial license for 30 days and allows developers to test and fully utilize the library.