Geo-Fencing in Data Governance and It’s Possible Uses

What is Geo-Fencing?

A Geo-fence is a feature that defines a virtual boundary around a real-world geographic area. Every time the user enters or exits the boundary of a particular area, actions are often triggered during a location-enabled device. Usually, the user will receive a notification with certain information that supported its location in real-time.
The main advantage of this technology is that it creates a fusion between the virtual world and the real one. We make use of Geofencing in several projects, particularly within the health industry.

Geofencing notifies your app when its device enters or leaves the countries. It allows you to make cool apps that will trigger a notification whenever you allow home or greet users with the newest and greatest deals whenever favorite shops are nearby.

Applications of Geo-Fencing

Geo-fencing has multiple use cases and if implemented aptly, can positively impact business operations.

Defence, Research & Finance

By assigning geo-fences to devices deployed in finance, defense, or research, IT can ensure that the device is non-operational outside of the designated geo-fence. Using an MDM tool IT can define multiple geofences for various areas of operation and can make the device obsolete outside of the geo-fences. Every time the device enters or leaves the geofence, it's notified and that they can track the situation of the device and check for compliance violations if any. This ensures that critical data on the device is secure at all times and cannot be accessed outside of designated premises.

Delivery Executives

Assigning particular areas to particular delivery executives. By assigning geo-fences to delivery executives, optimum efficiency is often achieved by avoiding multiple delivery executives being assigned to equivalent geographical areas.

Schools

More and more schools are implementing e-learning to enhance the training experience for college kids. Setting geofences on devices owned by the school eliminates the threat of students taking the device home and misusing it for any other purpose. Geo-fences ensure device security also as enforces intended usage.

Remote / Travelling Employees

IT can enforce multiple device policies for various geo-fences. These device policies include WiFi configurations and other settings specific to office location. This facilitates the workers to plug and work from multiple office locations without expecting IT support.

Fleet Management

In logistics and transport, devices with geo-fence can help track the situation of vehicles in the least times. This ensures timely support in case of a breakdown as well as device and vehicle security. Geofencing is used to assist the algorithm in performing decisions to reroute cargo when detours or slowdowns arise.

Geo-Fencing and Data Governance

Let’s dive deeper, and differentiate between geo-location and geo-fencing. Because geo-location uses your IP it can be easily spoofed or fooled and is not geographically accurate. However, geo-fencing is predicated on GPS coordinates from satellites tracking latitude and longitude.

While GPS can be spoofed it requires loads of expensive scientific equipment and certain features to validate the signal. Using geo-coordinates enables new sets of policies and controls to make sure security and enforce seamless verification.

Geofencing is often used as a tool to defend also to support risk management. By using it as a source of data collection, decisions are often implemented to notify and manage the danger of devices entering and leaving a specified geographic area. Geofencing can provide data that falls into Personally Identifiable Information (PII) which should make it regulated under most privacy laws.

Geofencing and location tracking can be utilized to help identify risk to an organization. By tracking and understanding the physical patterns of devices coming and going from an organization, a risk profile can be established. Questioning why and when it is appropriate for a work device to leave company property or personal devices to be brought in, is one concept. It could prevent lost/stolen work devices and discourage unsecured personal devices from being introduced to the network.

A geofence could be set to alert administrators to strange devices that have crossed into a virtual barrier. It also can alert administrators when devices that ought to never leave the premises have crossed the barrier. Although this has not prevented the intrusion, it may alert the organization of an imminent threat, giving them a head start in the race.

Any collection of data is at risk. As an administrator, the risk of this data getting into the wrong hands must weigh with the benefits of trend analysis and the intelligence that can come from it. At this time, most functionalities require this to be on an application with preauthorized approval on the device, however, this can change. If a “master key” could be created to fit any application and allow administrators to take over control of devices in secured locations. Administrators could see what trespassers are seeing, pack up cameras and audio to stop information leaks

GeoFencing in FileCloud

Geopolitics and government cost-cutting combined have added urgency to moving files and sharing them in the cloud: cost-cutting because the cloud is perceived to be cheaper than on-premises, and geopolitics because greater scrutiny of where files are located and who they are shared with is accelerating the need to geofence data.

With FileCloud Online, you get the complete flexibility and choice to decide where your organization’s data is stored. FileCloud Online is hosted in secure, world-class data centers in the US, EU, Canada, Australia, and Asia. You can select a region that is right for your business. FileCloud also enables administrators to discover and manage sensitive data. DPOs and administrators can now search for common data types using built-in pattern identifiers including e-mail addresses, and phone numbers

Conclusion

The is no standardized global law for cybersecurity and privacy. The European Union (EU) has stricter encompassing privacy policies than those in the United States (US). According to IT Governance, "unlike the European Union, the US has no single federal law that regulates information security, cybersecurity, and privacy throughout the country. Several states have their own cybersecurity laws additionally to data breach notification laws. These areas are currently regulated by a patchwork of industry-specific federal laws and state legislation, with varying scope and jurisdiction. Geofencing is emerging as a tool offered to perform tasks, instead of just notifying administrators. Current privacy policies and laws are insufficient when the scope of geofencing is applied to current methodologies. Geofencing must be regulated in a fashion that ensures data collected is important and relevant, which the info is kept safe from potential threats

By Team FileCloud