Why and How to Secure Your Data

Introduction

Most companies are so focused on their day-to-day operations, trying to acquire new business, trying to please current customers, that they never truly have the time to think about security breaches. When it happens, it's often too late: the damage has already been done. And your company may never totally recover from this.

In this presentation, we will show you how a data breach could potentially threaten your whole organization, and how to protect yourself to ensure that it never occurs in the first place.

Is the Threat Real?

You might think that business owners who worry about data theft are being overly cautious, if not near paranoid; that, even though malicious attacks do happen from time to time, it's no big deal. You can just clean up your systems and move on, right? Wrong.

If data protection is not high on you priority list, it should be. Why? Not only because, every year, thousands of companies fall prey to this harmful phenomenon. But, more importantly, because data breaches are often only the beginning... They create snowball effects that wreck havoc in every sphere of your business. The first of which being your revenue.

Impact on the Revenue

Security breaches can severely cripple your cashflow when, for example, a thief manages to retrieve your financial information and then uses that info to impersonate you. Your company can also lose big by having intellectual property (like protoypes and secret projects) stolen and used by the competition.

However, the number one cause that will have your revenue decrease is customer churn. Most cases of theft, unfortunately, will go public. Then, once the story's on the news, good luck for attracting new business. You will have been labelled as untrustworthy, which brings us to our next point...

Impact on the Reputation

If you've been operating for any length of time, you know that one of your most prized assets is none other than your reputation. What people think of you, and the adjectives that come to their lips when the name of your company is brought up depends on the experiences they had with your company.

With a breach, especially when clients' info has been exposed, you will incur a heavy loss of credibility. Don’t be surprised if that customer takes his business elsewhere and tells one or two other companies about his misfortune. This negative impact on your reputation can also motivate other current clients to start entertaining other options.

Protection Measures

First of all, if we are to protect ourselves against outside threats, we need to define where those usually come from. What's at the root of data breaches?

According to recent studies, one third of breaches is caused by human negligence; misplacing or right straight losing important papers is not as uncommon as one may think. Not destroying files that contain sensible information also strongly weighs in the balance. Business owners can blame another third of breaches on malicious attacks that take advantage of security loopholes and vulnerabilities in your computer network to access your valuable data.

Protection Measures

So how exactly do we stop these attacks? When it comes to your digital data, you need to implement a system that will control how the information circulates inside your company. The system should also determine who gets the access to what type of info and protect your network against unauthorized requests.

With that being said, all attacks are not computer based. One of the most common practices for information thieves is to rummage through your trash to find sensible documents. That's why you should always destroy any such file by using shredding services.

Conclusion

Data breaches might very well be unavoidable in the sense that, if someone with the means to do it wants to obtain some of your info, he will most certainly accomplish his goal, one way or another. However, you can make his job much harder by putting into place protective measures. And more importantly, you can greatly limit the damage he can do to you. So, go ahead and get your business secured. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you lose your reputation and the trust of your clients…

For more information about how to secure your company against breaches: http://www.shredit.com/