How data breaches can impact SME?

A data breach occurs when information is stolen or transferred from a system without the owner's knowledge or permission. A data breach can occur in either a small or large firm. Stolen data may contain sensitive, proprietary, or confidential information, such as organization confidential data, customer data, trade secrets, or national security breaches.

The impacts of a data breach might include damage to the target company's reputation as a response of a perceived "betrayal of trust." Victims and their customers may additionally face financial losses if associated data are included in the stolen information.

Small business owners need to grasp the consequences of a data breach to properly assess risk. Small businesses often mistakenly believe that they’re too small to be a target and don’t prepare. That lack of preparation creates vulnerabilities for criminals to exploit.

Running a small business requires the ability to understand, anticipate and guard against risk. Understanding risk requires a clear-eyed view of the consequences of a data breach. Read the below impact a business can face from such attacks.

Impacts of Data Breaches on SME:

1.??Financial Loss:?The financial impact of a data breach is undoubtedly one of the most immediate and hard-hitting consequences that organizations will have to deal with. According to a recent study, the cost of a data breach has risen 12% over the past five years to ￡3.2m on average globally.

2.?Reputational Damage:?The reputational damage resulting from a data breach can be devastating for a business. Research has shown that up to a third of customers in retail, finance and healthcare will stop doing business with organizations that have been breached. Additionally, 85% will tell others about their experience, and 33.5% will take to social media to vent their anger.

News travels fast and organizations can become a global news story within a matter of hours of a breach being disclosed. This negative press coupled with a loss in consumer trust can cause irreparable damage to the breached company.

3.?Operational Downtime:?Business operations will often be heavily disrupted in the aftermath of a data breach. Organizations will need to contain the breach and conduct a thorough investigation into how it occurred and what systems were accessed. Operations may need to be completely shut down until investigators get all the answers they need. This process can take days, even weeks, depending on the severity of the breach. This can have a huge knock-on effect on revenue and an organization’s ability to recover.

4.?Loss of Sensitive Data: If a data breach has resulted in the loss of sensitive personal data, the consequences can be devastating. Personal data is any information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify an individual. This will include everything from a name to an email address, IP address and images. It also includes sensitive personal data such as biometric data or genetic data which could be processed to identify an individual.

How to Prevent Data Breaches?

High-profile data breaches remind us all that data security is a top priority for businesses. We might have discovered that organizations now face a one in four chance of a data breach that costs approximately $2.21M in the next two years. The aftermath of a breach includes decreased customer loyalty, distrust, a potential loss in revenues, and a negative brand reputation. Check the below effective ways how to prevent data breaches with proven methods for prevention.

• Vulnerability and Compliance Management: Using and compliance management tool or at the very least completing a vulnerability assessment will help you identify the gaps, weaknesses, and security misconfigurations within your physical and virtual environments. VCM can continuously monitor your infrastructure and IT assets for vulnerabilities and compliance weaknesses and configuration best practices.
• Regular Audits on Security Posture: Completing regular audits to identify potential new gaps in compliance or governance will help in validating your security posture.?A security audit will be more a more thorough assessment of your security policies compared to the vulnerability assessment or penetration testing. A security audit considers the dynamic nature of the organization as well as how the organization handles information security.
• Train & Educate Your Staff: After completing your security policy audits, you can then enforce a written employee policy around data privacy and security. You will want to hold regular security trainings so that all employees are aware of these newly created policies – after all, people cannot voluntarily comply with unfamiliar policies. When establishing your security policy for employees.
• Asset Inventory:?A visibility of what hardware and software assets you have in your network and physical infrastructure will help you gain a greater understanding of your organization’s security posture. An asset inventory can also be used to build categories and ratings around the threats and vulnerabilities your assets may encounter. Categories and ratings for these vulnerabilities can help you better prioritize the remediation efforts that will take place on these assets.

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