Data Breaches are not uncommon. Now more so thanks to data being at the centre of every operation. Businesses suffer huge losses, not just in terms of losing face, but financially too. Wendi Whitmore, leader of IBM’s X-Force Independent Response and Intelligence Services(IRIS) team, stated in a recent interview with ZDNet, that businesses hit by data breaches could lose between $2 million and $300 million.
The monetary loss happens primarily due to the rebuilding of the infrastructure and recovery of data after an attack which is an ordeal in itself. The infrastructure suffers hugely when the attack is due to a destructive malware which also causes loss of data. When it boils down to the prevention of malware and ransomware from hitting your servers, there is no single way. Rather, Whitmore believes that there are certain steps that the companies can take towards limiting the impact of a data breach. For starters, the employees should be knowledgeable about account segregation and authentication controls. Almost a million dollars can be saved if the business manages to control the data breach within a month.
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Whitmore mentioned that there are only 23% of companies that have an incident response plan. One of them is IBM which saw a 25% reduction in the data breach in 2017 as compared to 2016. With the European Union implementing the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) legislation next month, the laws surrounding data protection and regulation are becoming stringent by the day. The GDPR needs a business to report the data breach and related information to the authorities within 72 hours. Whitmore explained that this window might be too small for businesses to identify the cause of the breach and other information within 72-hours.
With data becoming the new gold of today, it needs to be protected. Take a look at the recent Facebook data controversy. Even though they were not hit by a malware or ransom, they still had a data breach that caused massive unrest among people all over the world.
