Why Businesses Shouldn’t Ignore A Data Breach

According to 1E, an endpoint management firm and security firm, US companies are still vulnerable to cyber attacks and data breach despite making significant security investments.

Based on an independent survey, the report includes  300 IT security decision-makers from the US.

Cybersecurity has been receiving more attention and investment. Global spending is expected to surpass $1tn by 2021. However, the report stated that the largest gaps remain in plain sight.

More than three quarters (77%) of respondents think they aren’t prepared to respond to serious data breaches. 60% reported that they have suffered a security breach within the last two years. 31% said this happened more than once.

Eighty percent of respondents claim that digital transformation has increased cyber risk. Only 23% believe that their IT operations and IT security teams work well together to protect the business. However, 97% said their organization would benefit from greater collaboration.

Over three quarters of respondents (77%) believe that remote work will remain a security threat until organizations can reach, patch, and secure remote workers effectively.

Most respondents want to see more investment in areas like software migration automation (80%), breach response and remedy (67%), or software patching (65%).

Companies must maintain a high level of cyber hygiene to avoid major breaches. This leads to a software arms race, a fierce competition between exploiters as well as the entire software industry. In a constant loop, one creates an problem, and the other builds defenses.

Kurt De Ruwe (CIO at Signify), stated that IT operations and IT security must collaborate, set common goals, and use the same toolset.

Companies are at risk because they use older operating systems and software versions without patching and without proper encryption.

De Ruwe stated that new technology was an important tool to improve IT operations. He said that live information is crucial because viruses, phishing attacks, and other things can happen at any moment. Therefore, you must be able react quickly.

Daniel said, “Too often I see organizations spend far too much budgets and resources on expensive tools.” “But the problem is not always about a lack of technology. It’s often the absence of a cohesive relationship among IT security and IT operation, which can lead to gaps in an organization’s security profile.

While you cannot eliminate your cyber risk completely, you can reduce your risk profile by combining IT and cyber security operations.

10 ways to reduce an organization’s risk of data breach

1.) For pragmatic security and operational needs, align goals closely with the business.

• Identify which IT systems are the most important for business operations.
• Recognize systems that can be retired in order to increase efficiency and reduce security requirements.

2.)  Establish shared goals and responsibility for IT security operations and IT security:

• Get 100% asset visibility
• Upgrade and patch are based on a set of agreed KPIs.
• Make sure your most important assets are updated and patched as a top priority.
• If you are unable to patch or update, mitigate the vulnerabilities.

3.) Automated patching and updates to the greatest extent possible

• Reduce the need to intervene when possible.
• Remote workers can self-serve OS upgrades, which will reduce IT’s burden.
• Allow operational and security tasks can be performed in real-time at every endpoint, without users being distracted.

4.) Provide transparent progress reporting to IT and security teams

• Make sure everyone is able to see the progress toward the visibility and patching goals.

5.) Report consistent information to the board on security status

• Establish a Key Performance Indicators driven framework to report to the board that raises awareness about security posture.
• Both IT operations and IT Security should be held accountable for the achievement of and reporting on these KPIs.

6.) Join a cyber-information sharing organization relevant to your industry

• You should ensure that your IT operations and IT security personnel have the most current threat information.
• Based on this threat information, adjust your security and operations.

7.) Identify the person responsible for which actions in a cyber-incident

• Create a shared plan for incident response and recovery.
• Rehearse such eventualities.
• Incorporate the technical response activities into your company’s overall incident response plan.
• You must be able to recover from cyber-incidents when they happen.

8.) How to break down communication barriers

• Managers should communicate their priorities and goals.
• If possible, physically locate IT operations and IT Security together.
• Encourage regular communication between IT operations personnel and IT security personnel.

9.) Consider co-managed services

• Co-managed services can take the burden of IT support off your internal staff
• Outsourcing some of your IT operations insures you are current with the latest threats, techniques and security monitoring.

10.)  At least once a year, update your action plan, KPIs, and priorities

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now if you want to protect your business against cyber attacks and security breach.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Columbia, SC 29201
(803) 408-7166
http://manageditservicescolumbia.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence, Charleston

What Should a Company Do After a Data Breach?

The news that data breach is increasing is not good news for businesses, despite all the chaos in the world. Data breaches are only going to get worse. It happened most recently in Colonial Pipeline and JBS, which are major meatpackers.

These are just two examples of many throughout the year. Data breaches don’t just affect large companies. Every year, the same problem affects smaller and mid-sized companies.

What should you do if this happens to your company? Here are 7 steps to follow after a data breach.

Here are 7 steps to take after a data breach

What should a company do? Inform Your Clients and Employees about the cybersecurity breach. Don’t keep information about data breaches secret. Your business is about providing services to customers and clients. They need to be informed about any breach of their data to ensure that they are protected.

This is also true for your employees. Your employees’ personal information could also have been compromised, which could lead to identity theft or other criminal activity.

Inform Your Clients and Employees about the Data Breach

It is important to inform everyone within your company and clients about what has happened. Customers should be able to let the credit bureaus know the details so they can take appropriate action if someone attempts to use their financial information. If you don’t have data security in place, your employees will take similar steps to protect themselves.

Your company could be sued if you keep the data breach information secret. This could result in lawsuits against your company for allowing private information to be misused. A lack of trust could cause you to lose valuable employees and customers.

Secure Your Systems

What was the source of the data breach in your IT system? Without delay, get to work on fixing the problem. You could have suffered multiple breaches, which can leave you open to more if they don’t stop.

Your company should change your passwords and access codes after a data breach. This will allow you to get your files back on track. The codes are available to the person responsible for the breach and they can use them as much as they like until you block them. It’s a good idea temporarily to shut down remote access to your systems as a precaution.

It is also smart to create a mobile breach team in order to respond quickly. This team may include more than your IT professionals on site. These may include lawyers, human resources, communications, management, and others.

Find out What was Breached

Which type of data was compromised in your company? Did it include financial information about your customers? Did hackers also steal information that could give them access to identities? These are crucial questions that a company should ask following a data breach.

A criminal can simply steal something as small as a birthday address to gain personal information about someone. Even compromising mailing addresses can lead to the theft of personal information.

Passwords can be easily hacked to gain access to email accounts. Worst is that your employees’ and customers credit card information could be stolen.

It is easy for credit bureaus to raise red flags about stolen cards. However, it is important to determine exactly how many credit card numbers were stolen. To find out every detail, you need to have your IT services team working on it. This will allow you to avoid making ambiguous statements in letters or calls.

Check to Ensure Your Cybersecurity Defenses Are Working

After your company has dealt with the data breach, it is time to verify that any cybersecurity procedures or patches you have put in place work. It is possible to miss some things if you rush to get your IT security in order.

It is important to test the hacker’s method to access your data and ensure it doesn’t happen again. It is possible for it to happen again, hours or even days later, if you don’t do a thorough test.

Trust your IT team to determine the source and how it occurred. This can be done quickly by a reliable security team.

As part of your penetration testing, make sure that all servers and virtual machines are scanned. These areas are often the most susceptible to data breaches. Prior vulnerabilities should be fixed, as well as any security holes discovered during inspections.

All Data Breach Protocols Need to Be Updated

You might want to update the protocols that you used to notify your staff about data breaches. Are they well-informed on how to handle it? Maybe you were surprised to discover that your staff didn’t know how to deal with it because it had never happened before.

Many businesses have never experienced security breaches before. This is why complacency can be a problem. It is important to take the time to train your staff and establish new procedures.

It is a smart idea to outsource an IT support team after a data breach, so that they can implement new security technology. They can help you and your employees learn about how to avoid phishing emails.

Acute awareness and education are the best tools to prevent data breaches. Hackers will find ways to infiltrate your data faster if you don’t know as much.

Get Cyber Liability Insurance

Cyber liability insurance policies can help protect data loss. It’s a smart idea to protect yourself even further. Data loss can lead to large financial losses, as well as the possibility of paying out settlements to people who have been compromised.

It is essential to immediately protect your company after a data breach. You might not have experienced a data breach the last time you do business.

Get expert IT support

Electric can help your company navigate the challenges of a distributed workforce. Electric can help you implement security policies that are consistent with industry best practices throughout your company. This will help to prevent data breaches.

SpartanTec, Inc. has a commitment to security architecture that starts at the heart of your business. We do this by unifying security at all levels, including the application, network, and device. Call us now for more information.

SpartanTec, Inc.
Columbia, SC 29201
(803) 408-7166
http://manageditservicescolumbia.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence, Charleston

Columbia - What is the cost of a data breach?

Security incidents and data breaches have become very expensive. Large companies like Desjardins Group and Norsk Hydro reported to have spent millions in the wake of a data breach.

These are only a couple of the most extreme and high profile cyberattacks. However, the financial effect of a data breach remains high even for small and medium companies.

A new report from IBM and the Ponemon Institute revealed that the average cost of a data breach in the year 2020 reached $3.6 million. It marked a 1.5% drop from the average cost reported back in 2019. However, it still represented a 10% increase over the past five years.

The costs include the indirect and direct expenses related to effort and time in tackling a data breach as well as the regulatory fines and the lost opportunities due to bad publicity. The average costs may have been relatively unchanged, it’s still a fact that the costs are larger for companies that are not prepared and smaller for those who are.

 

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The Rising Cost of Data Breach For Unprepared Companies

The organizations in the United States take on the highest costs, which stands at an average of $8.19 million per data breach, which represents a 5.3% increase from 2019. The rise is driven by the complicated regulatory setting that differ from one state to another, especially when it comes to cyberattack notification. In the United Kingdom, the figure has increased to more than 4% to about $3.9 million, which is a bit higher than the average cost across the world after many years.

The average cost of every record lost has dipped slightly lower from $150 in 2019 to $146. The costliest type of information to lose are the customer PII records, which were involved in about 80% of the data breaches in the study. The cheapest information to lose is the employee PII, which is the least likely type of data to lose during a cyberattack.

Almost 40% of the average total cost of a cybersecurity breach are attributed to lost business. This includes lost revenue because of system downtime, increased customer turnover, and the rising expenses of getting new business because of bad publicity. If you want to cut the costs, you need to prepare your business and that includes having a data backup and disaster recovery plan.

Slow Breach Response Can Also Increase The Costs

As the saying goes, time is money. This applies to data breaches, too. If you’re too slow to detect and contain the data breach, it could be disastrous for your company. It takes a total of 280 days to identify and contain a data breach. Responding to data breaches quickly can help you save cost. Studies revealed that companies that can identify and contain a cybersecurity breach in less than 200 days spent on average $1.1 million less.

To keep the cost of a data breach down, you need to have proper visibility into your environment and you need to have a tested and robust offline backups and data recovery plan.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now if you want to prepare your company against data breach.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Columbia, SC 29201
(803) 408-7166
http://manageditservicescolumbia.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence