Can You Afford to Be Complacent About Your Data Security?
Despite tighter controls and stricter data security regulations, the number of data breaches continues to rise. Indeed, according to research by Accenture, 68% of business leaders believe that cybersecurity risks to their businesses are increasing, and security breaches increased by 11% between 2018 and 2019, with the average cost of a malware attack on a company standing at $2.6 million.
We know that cybercriminals are using many different tactics to gain control over your sensitive information, including social engineering, malware, and supply chain attacks. Should they take control of your data, the consequence can be devastating to your business. Here are five of the most damaging.
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Financial Loss
Data breaches can have a huge financial impact of your company.
Costs can include compensating affected customers, setting up incident response efforts, investigating the breach, investment into new security measures, and legal fees, not to mention the eye-watering regulatory penalties that can be imposed for non-compliance.
You may have to pay for compensation, incident response, and investigations into the breach, as well as invest in new security measures. There may also be legal fees associated with legal action, and substantial regulatory penalties if you are found to have been non-compliant with regulations.
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Reputational Damage
If your company suffers a breach, this will quickly become public knowledge. The reputational damage suffered can last a long time, and will hamper your ability to win new customers. Negative press and loss of public trust in the organization can be too much to recover from.
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Operational Downtime
A data breach is likely to disrupt your business. You will need to contain the breach, and investigate to assess which systems and data have been compromised, and how it happened. Operations may have to be shut down for days or weeks ─ with a considerable knock-on effect on revenues and profits.
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Legal Action
Data protection regulations require you to take all the necessary steps to protect all sensitive data that you hold. Shareholders, vendors, businesses, and individuals can take legal action against you to claim compensation.
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The Consequences of Loss of Sensitive Data
Should a data breach result in the loss of personal information, the outcome can be disastrous. Not only to your business, but to the individual who has had their data revealed.
Personal data includes any information that can be used to identify someone, as well as confidential financial information (such as credit card and bank account details), and biometric or genetic data. Consider a patient who is undergoing critical care, and has their health information deleted. What price do we put on a life?
Can you afford to be complacent about your data security?
Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the FBI has seen a 400% increase in reports of cyberattacks. Despite this, many small and medium businesses are ill-prepared to protect and combat data breaches.
With the devastating potential effects of a data breach, can your company afford to be complacent about data security? Could you weather the storm that could follow a data breach, suffer the reputational and financial loss, and shut down your operations for days or weeks?
Don’t be complacent. Be protected. Contact Millennium Tech USA to discover how.