DATA SECURITY
regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA, is a legal requirement and essential for maintaining trust and credibility in the eyes of customers and partners. Failure to protect sensitive data can result in severe legal consequences, further exacerbating the financial impact on the organisation.” On top of regulatory scrutiny and litigious customers, Chaudhuri touched on the reputational consequences and the loss of trust between the customer and the business. “Beyond the immediate financial losses, businesses face a myriad of long-term repercussions. One of the most significant impacts is damaging their reputation and losing customer trust. “In today’s digital age, where data breaches frequently make headlines, customers have become more cautious and demanding when sharing their personal information. A breach can erode customers’ trust in a business, leading to customer churn, decreased revenue, and difficulties in acquiring new customers.” Access Denied As Chaudhuri points out, it’s often the secondary factors that come a lot closer to breaking a business that has fallen victim to cybercriminals. Although the €20 million fine the EU can hand down to businesses may put a shiver down the spines of owners across the continent, what’s more likely to finish off a business is the reputational damage and customer churn as a result of a breach. As a result, Bernard Montel Technical Director of Tenable says that businesses need to take a risk-based approach to cyber security, accepting that the baddies might get in, but mitigating damage at every turn. “By having a risk-based approach organisations link the business risk, to the IT risk and then to the cyber risks. By doing that they’re reducing the complexity and only focusing on what is risky for the organisation. “Then, if there is some vulnerability or misconfiguration in a cloud that is detected with a tool, businesses can immediately apply the necessary measures before it has an impact on the organisation.” People The solution also lies with the people inside the business. After all, phishing attacks have become a popular attack method for a reason; they are successful.
CONTINUED
To that point, Sabino added that, in her experience, businesses “are simply not doing enough.” “The further we move away from Covid, and the more working from home becomes ingrained in our everyday lives, the clearer it is that businesses are not keeping up with what it takes to keep themselves protected. Hackers are seemingly one step ahead of everyone else, and technology is moving faster for many employees to handle. “At first glance, businesses might think that the biggest risk to storage solutions is hacking and cybercrime. No doubt this is a very real threat, especially if the information is not secured properly, and there are no regular checks of the systems. That said, the often overlooked, and actually more pressing, concern is the risk of human error, leading to data breaches. “This could happen on both sides of the coin: an employee working at the storage solutions may accidentally divulge information they are privy to within their work, or an employee at a business using the storage solutions may also do something similar. “There are a number of ways businesses can protect themselves from these instances. From our point of view, the main suggestion we have for businesses is to implement regular training around data protection for employees. “This can involve something as simple as providing definitions of GDPR, what it constitutes, and how human error breaches occur. The dangers of phishing scams,
Ani Chaudhuri CEO
dasera.com
John Benkert CEO
cigent.com
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