It is a hard, cold fact that data breaches are a way of life now. There really is no 100%, fail-safe way to prevent a data breach from happening. Eventually the odds of your business experiencing a cyber-intrusion are going to run out. According to the 2017 Ponemon Cost of Data Breach Study, the global cost of data breaches was $3.6 million last year with more than 24,000 records involved and that number is rising steadily.
Following the Verizon Data Breach last year, the investigation revealed some pretty interesting statistics that show the extent of the data breach problem. 75% of breaches were done by outsiders, 62% involved hacking, 81% took advantage of stolen or weak passwords, 66% of the malware was introduced by infected email attachments, 61% of the companies that were breached had less than 1,000 employees, and 95% of phishing attacks that led to a breach were followed by some sort of software installation.
So what do all these statistics mean? It means if you are a small business and think you are safe from a data breach, you’re not. More than half of the data breaches that happen in the world involve small companies. It also means that password security is amazingly important as is training employees how to identify suspicious email attachments.
Having your company’s data breached and stolen is an experience that no one wants to have to deal with. However, rather than pretending it won’t ever happen to you, it’s important to realize that not doing regular back ups can damage your business beyond repair. It is time for all of us to realize that the best course of action, after doing your best to prevent a breach, is to make sure measures are in place to detect and preserve data loss.
Data breaches and cyber attacks are not the only reasons it is important to back up your company’s data. There are many other events that can bring your business to its knees without a good back up plan in place. These events include such things as hard drive failures, employee errors that result in overwritten or deleted files, viruses that corrupt documents, natural disasters, and more. In fact, 44% of data loss is caused by human error, system crashes and corrupt files, 60% of companies that lose their data will go out of business within 6 months, and businesses that are unable to get operations up and running within 10 days of a data loss usually will not survive. As you can see, when a data loss occurs time is of the essence.
So what can you do to prevent a disruption in your company’s operations due to data loss? Back up your data regularly for starters. However, it does not end there. Once you back up your data make sure that the back up is tested regularly too. A back up will do you no good should it be corrupt or incomplete. Also, teach your employees how to recognize suspicious emails by giving them regular examples of what they look like and how to deal with them. Next, create more than one back up copy and store multiple copies off-site – in a lock box at a bank and in the cloud are excellent ways to achieve this goal as well as an on-site back up.
Although data breaches and cyber attacks have become de rigueur these days, there is no need to panic. You just need to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. If you heed the advice above data loss will not be in the equation and getting your business back up and running will be easy and as stress-free as it possibly can be.
For more information on preventing data breaches and how to educate your employees about suspicious emails and more read our blog called How To Protect Your Business From Cyber Attacks by clicking here.
DataOne Networks can help you to secure your organization’s data and keep your business up and running. Click here and contact us today to get started!