words Al Woods
Data is one of the most valuable assets for the business. Sadly, data breaches have become more common today, as more companies are coming online. A majority of the companies that suffer from data breaches face a lot of financial and reputational losses.
As the majority of the business data consists of information about payments and customers, data protection should be paramount. Thankfully there are ways to protect your business data from getting breached.
Cloud protection platforms provide higher data protection through numerous strategies like security least privilege principle that protects your data by restricting the system access. If you are responsible for your company’s data protection, you should be aware of these four terrible effects of data breaches on business.
Penalties and Fines
Payment information is one of the most classified information that businesses operate on. If data related to payments and user banking information is lost, companies need to pay hefty penalties.
Businesses often are levied with fines from authorities that govern card payment transactions. In addition to the government-imposed fines, they will also be susceptible to lawsuits filed by customers whose information was lost.
Many small and medium businesses (SMEs) already struggle with low funding. On top of that, the additional burden of fines can leave the company in the ruins of bankruptcy.
Forensic investigation
When a business loses the classified business information of their users, they have to face the wrath of numerous offline and cyber security government councils. A data breach also invites a forensic investigation to discover the causes and vulnerabilities resulting from the data breach.
Numerous cyber security experts analyze the different components of the systems to determine whether the attack was caused by a genuine attacker or due to the human error or negligence of the concerned person.
The outcome of the investigation determines the degree of punishment levied on the company. In 2019, Google had to pay a whopping $56.6 million in fines for breaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliances.
Though these investigations reveal valuable insights into your security architecture, the cost of a data breach would be too high. You can avoid all this catastrophic financial burden by consulting cyber security experts who can help you protect your data against potential cyber security breaches.
They use state-of-the-art security methodologies like security on least privilege principle to restrict and control the access of the system data.
Loss of trust and reputation
It takes years to build trust in the minds of customers. Companies have spent millions of dollars over the years to establish a brand image that is recognized and loved by their loyal customers. A data breach could ruin all the work done by years of reputation-building measures.
News about data breaches spreads like wildfire mainly because they involve an enormous amount of classified user data being exposed to the whole world. It creates a significant security concern for the users and the business too.
So, when a business suffers from a cloud security breach, it severely affects its reputation and trust from the customers. There are numerous occurrences where the share prices of companies tumbled following data breaches.
Dealing with the aftermath of a data breach and rebuilding the public image can be impossible for many companies. The potential customer finds it hesitant to buy your products or services, and even business partners would want to avoid associating with your company. In many cases, the investors leave the boards and avoid investing additional money into your company.
It will always be on the internet
Your marketing head would surely agree that nothing goes away from the internet. Online news networks, tech blogs, journalists, forums write news articles, posts, videos and discuss the cyber-attacks and data leaks. All that bad publicity can never really be removed from the internet.
The companies get tainted with the wrong name and will always be portrayed in harmful light by the media. On top of that, it will severely hurt your online presence. The social media handles will be flooded with negative comments and reviews that can destroy your brand’s online image.
Moreover, as the websites of the news networks have higher authority in SERPS, it can severely affect your search engine rankings. For example, whenever a person would search your company name on the search engines, they will be presented with news articles and videos that talk about your company’s data leak.
Surviving a data breach can be brutal, especially when the company has just started spreading its wings. It would be impossible to fight the multimillion-dollar lawsuits that come with data breaches.
That is why it makes sense to take the necessary steps to strengthen your cloud security by enlisting professional cyber security experts to prevent any kinds of malware attacks, information leaks, or data breaches.
