A data breach in your organization has the potential to financially ruin your business.
Over the past few years, we have seen the volume of cyber-attacks increase alongside the average price of successful breaches. If you are a small-medium sized business, it is important to know the potential financial risks to a large-scale data breach within your organization. A recent study conducted by Ponemon and IMB has revealed some sobering truths.You can read the full report here.
The most obvious takeaway from the IBM's 2022 report is that the average total cost of a data breach has reached $4.35 million in 2022. This is an all-time high for data breach costs that only looks like it will increase in the years to come. Can your organization handle a breach of this magnitude? The short answer is probably not. Roughly 83% of SMB's admit that they would not be able to financially recover from a large-scale cyber-attack.
Another unfortunate statistic is that 60% of organizations breaches led to an increases cost of services on the customer's side. This means that often times, to recover from a data breach an organization may have to push that cost to customers. This isn't fair to the consumers who trusted your organization with their private data. Making sure your organization is secure is the number one way to foster trust between business and customer.
One of the easiest ways these data breaches happen is through stolen credentials. 19% of breaches are due to stolen credentials most likely through social engineering's or phishing schemes. This statistic proves the usefulness of MFA and good password habits. In fact, many bad actors will completely stop their attack once they hit MFA in your organization.
For many hackers, breaking through a second form of authentication just isn't worth it. Your organization much take login credentials seriously. This means creating passwords that are unique, impersonal, and complex alongside implementing MFA on all applications.
Do you believe your organization can accurately identify a data breach?
If so, can it be done in a timely manner? According to the recent IMB and Ponemon study, the average time it takes to identify a data breach is 277 days. By the time your organization realizes you have been breached it may be too late. These hackers often have 6 months of time to take what they want and disrupt your business. Your organization needs to implement controls to accurately and quickly identify threats before they do irreparable damage to your infrastructure.
These statistics may be eye opening for your organization. If so, then the time to act is now.
Effective ways to protect your organization are often super easy the implement and can be done in a timely manner. MFA and promoting good password habits is the easiest step to take in securing your business. Make sure your employees use complex and unique passwords across every application or login. Multi-factor authentication is another way to make sure you have an extra level of protection on all of your login credentials.
Another crucial step to protecting your network is to perform a security assessment. Knowing where your gaps are is the first step in making sure you know how secure your business already is and where you need to move in the future. CorpInfoTech specializes in security assessments that give you both the problem and solution to your security issues.
Making sure your employees are aware of the security threats they may confront while working is integral. Conducting security awareness training with your employees to make sure they know how to protect themselves online is important to fostering a culture of security within your organization.
CorpInfoTech (Corporate Information Technologies) provides small to mid-market organizations with expert I.T. services including compliance assessment, cybersecurity penetration tests, and comprehensive business continuity planning services. CorpInfoTech can help organizations, quantify, create, refine, and mitigate the risks presented by business threatening disasters in whatever form they may be disguised.