If you’re concerned about the security risks your business faces, then you’re right to be. Although many businesses have moved towards an approach to security of “we know we’re going to be breached at some point, so let’s focus on how we deal with these breaches when they occur,” prudent directors continue to understand the importance of maintaining security integrity in the first place. A negligent approach to security integrity will undermine even the very best response and actions undertaken in reaction to a breach.
Your Business and Security: What You Stand to Lose Say your business security is breached. What do you stand to lose? In most cases the answer, depending on the size of your business and the scale of the breach, will revolve around money. What leads to you losing potentially millions of dollars’ worth of value?
- Loss of data, intellectual property, and business intelligence
- Fines from business regulators, the government, and lawsuits from clients
- Devaluation of your brand
- Loss of future business due to a combination of a loss of trust and brand devaluation
What is truly scary about security breaches hitting your business is that you won’t experience one or two of these consequences, but all of them. What are the biggest security concerns your business faces? What options are out there to help you negate these risks? The Need to Transform, and the Lack of Appetite to Do So While all global businesses know of the importance of driving strong security standards across their organizations, many are hamstrung by their own lack of appetite for transformation. As the risks to business security grow ever more sophisticated, so does the need for businesses to be at the forefront of new security initiatives and developments.
Think about the potential risks of continuing with your current, outdated security, and how these systems compromise your integrity. Surely the, admittedly tough and stressful, process of transforming security is infinitely more attractive than dealing with the consequences of a security compromise? Meeting International Regulatory Standards Keeping abreast of updates to regulatory measures can be stressful in any industry. On a given day, a specific security incident not even linked to your company can highlight shortcomings in systems and set the wheels in motion for new regulations and standards.
The solution? There isn’t a straightforward one, as ultimately if a new standard comes in, you need to remain compliant. However, ensuring that you are compliant against today’s standards means you’re in a better place to take action should the goalposts move tomorrow. Data Privacy, Specifically Centered on New Trends and Technologies
Data privacy, both internally and externally with regards to protecting customer data, is a massive issue for businesses. While emerging technologies and trends – the move towards digital workplaces in the cloud and the continued boom of ‘bring your own device’ in offices – bring exciting opportunities for collaboration and productivity gains, they also bring a raft of data privacy concerns. It only takes one employee to flippantly leave a device signed in, or someone to unwittingly access a cloud data center via an insecure connection, and your business could be in trouble.
What can you do to try and negate these risks? The first step is to ensure you, as the person accountable for data security, are clear on what your business needs to do, and the procedures it needs to have in place. Once you know this, you can create an internal framework of guidelines and regulations to educate your teams and ensure you are set up to avoid problems around data privacy.
What’s Your Biggest Concern? Which of the three concerns we have identified here cause you the biggest headache? Do you have these matters in hand, and have another security matter that keeps you awake at night? Remember thatbusiness data security is a huge, overarching matter, which requires a strong architecture and pro-active mechanisms in place, both from a software and a people perspective, to be successful. Can you and your business afford to experience any of the consequences of being reckless or negligent around data security?
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