In today’s evolving security landscape, how important are cybersecurity and data privacy in maintaining business continuity? The answer is that it is crucial for any company to protect its data and keep its IT infrastructure secure.
Why is it important to maintain cybersecurity?
The first reason is fairly straightforward: cyber attacks are very costly. According to a Cost of Data Breach Study, the average cost of a data breach is $3.5 million. Of which $140,000 is attributable to lost business revenue.
The second reason is one of goodwill. If your company’s customers and partners lose their trust in you. For instance, because you suffered a data breach and/or experienced technical issues related to your IT infrastructure. Then they simply will not come back to you ever again.
Moreover, as customers do question your ability to protect their personal information, they will stop buying from you as well.
How does this translate into downtime and lost productivity?
First off, the cost of downtime can be significant. Especially if an organization’s IT infrastructure goes down for any period of time. Additionally, if the cause of downtime was a cyber attack that resulted in theft or destruction of data. Perhaps even with reputational damage and loss of clients, then the ramifications could be far-reaching indeed.
For example, consider this hypothetical scenario. A Fortune 500 company suffers a data breach that results in the loss of private customer information and confidential internal documents. News reports on this incident cause several major clients to cancel large orders with the company. Also, it leads to some clients dropping them altogether. The end result is that this company may never recover its reputation or its market share again.
Another risk factor is that if a company’s IT infrastructure goes down due to a cyberattack. Then it can’t conduct business as usual for its customers and partners. However, these same customers may have no idea what caused the disruption or when service will be restored.
This means they’ll have to go somewhere else for services until your organization gets back up and running again. This could result in a loss of market share. That is if someone else beats you out for those customers’ business while you are offline. Furthermore, once your business gets back up and running again after recovering from a cyberattack. It will have to work hard to win back any customers who have defected to competitors.
How can you protect your data?
One of the most effective ways to protect your data is by keeping backups. Backups are copies of your data that are stored elsewhere for use if a disaster strikes.
In addition to protecting you from the risk of losing data, backups also enable you to return to business as usual more quickly if your system becomes corrupted. This is because you can return your system to the state it was in at the time of your last backup, which will eliminate any changes made after that point.
Another way to protect yourself against a cyber attack is by implementing an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). An IDS uses a set of rules in combination with network-monitoring tools to detect cyber attacks and prevent them from causing damage. For example, an IDS may be able to detect when someone attempts to access your system without permission and block that individual from gaining access.
The end result is that you will be able to prevent cyber attacks and minimize their impact on your business continuity and reputation. In addition, using an IDS will allow you to find out about cyber attacks as soon as they occur so that you can take action before the attack causes too much damage.
How important is data privacy?
Though many people are now aware of the importance of data security, there are still many who do not realize how crucial it is for companies to maintain data privacy. It’s not only important for companies that deal with sensitive information like medical records or financial information; this also applies even for businesses that don’t deal with such information at all, because transparency is becoming increasingly important for all companies in this day and age.
Why is it so important for companies to maintain data privacy?
Oftentimes, a company’s reputation can take a severe hit if it loses customer trust and/or suffers reputational damage due to a cyber-attack or loss of customer information. For example, a company learned this lesson firsthand when its customers’ credit card information was stolen because hackers gained access beyond the company’s network defenses.
Conclusion: Importance of Cybersecurity and Data Privacy
Cyber attacks are very costly, and a data breach can lead to a loss of market share and a loss of clients. Using IDS and backups can help you protect your data and keep your business running smoothly.
