A data breach is a security incident that occurs when an unauthorized person or organization gets access to, steals, manipulates or exposes information of other people or organizations. According to the latest IBM report, data breaches generate costs of $4.88 million on average to the organizations that suffer them, derived from direct business impacts (operational downtime, loss of customer information, etc.) and incident management (investigation and correction of security deficiencies, staffing of customer service personnel, payment of fines, etc.). In addition to these costs, there are other costs, often more difficult to quantify, arising from reputational damage.
The origin of these data breaches can be found in the following areas:
Loss or theft of physical devices and documents: including those that have been discarded without having been properly destroyed.
Targeted attacks: either by exploiting technical vulnerabilities, deceiving employees or collaborating with disgruntled workers.
Human error: resulting from unintentional storage or sharing of data or through unsecured channels.
Being aware of data breaches allows us to identify those best practices that will help us minimize our exposure to this type of security risk.
How to avoid data breaches?
Train your employees: start with short training sessions on data protection and how to prevent breaches. An informed team is your first line of defense. Teaching them how to spot, avoid and report any suspicious activity or attempted attacks is a simple step that can make all the difference.
Protect devices: as we have seen, theft or loss of devices is one of the most common sources of data breaches. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure that unauthorized persons do not access the information they contain. Protect your devices with simple tools such as strong passwords, data encryption and two-step authentication.
Limit access to confidential and sensitive information: as a general rule, each employee should only have access to information that is essential to perform his or her job. In the case of confidential or sensitive information, access to it should be even more restrictive, limited to only those trusted individuals who really need to have access to it.
Destroy information securely before discarding it: both when it is time to dispose of printed documents and when devices become obsolete and it is time to dispose of them.
Evaluate the risk of third parties: external companies that provide products or services often have access to our company’s systems, which poses a risk given that these companies do not necessarily have the same security and information protection standards as we do. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate both their level of security and their compliance with regulatory standards to make the necessary decisions and take the necessary measures to minimize the risk of suffering a data breach through them.
Form a specialized cybersecurity team: this team will be in charge of constantly monitoring systems and networks, keeping equipment up to date, ensuring the correct encryption of information, developing and implementing incident response plans, etc. If it is not possible to have an in-house team, this service can be outsourced to companies specialized in cybersecurity.
As we have seen, data breaches are one of the most common security incidents, and one of the most costly for the companies that suffer them. Start protecting your business today by applying these simple measures – take control and secure your information!
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