DATA BREACHES AND HOW TO PREVENT THEM

It would be unjust to kickoff an article on “Data Breach” without paying due respects to the ONE AND ONLY “DATA” !!!

I hope all of us would agree upon the below premise given the history of events, inventions and wonders happening in the “Information Age”.

DATA (21st Century) = OIL (18th Century)

Data in today’s world is the primary driver that fuels ahead the global economy ranging from

1. Influencing an individual’s lifestyle
2. Driving forward an organization’s decision-making
3. Generating insightful analytics for a Business
4. Transforming the way people get educated
5. Empowering athletes to break human barriers & many many more …

We all know that even the mightiest warriors have their own vulnerabilities.

If DATA is the HERO, then DATA BREACH is the VILLAIN.

A data breach or data leak is the release of sensitive, confidential or protected data to an untrusted environment. Data breaches can occur in any size organization, from small businesses to major corporations.

Data breach can result in Information Leak/ Data Loss/ Erroneous Data.

WHAT DATA CAN BE BREACHED ?

• Financial data - Credit card numbers, bank details, financial statements
• Medical or Personal Health Information (PHI)
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) - Information that can be used to identify, contact or locate a person
• Intellectual property - Patents, trade secrets, customer lists, contracts
• Vulnerable and sensitive information - Meeting recordings, agreements, classified documents

HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE ?

Insider leaks

Disgruntled employees, former employees who still retain credentials to sensitive systems, or business partners who might be motivated by financial gain, commercially valuable information, or a desire for revenge.

Payment fraud

Payment fraud is an attempt to create false or illegal transactions. Common scenarios are credit card breach.

Loss or theft

Organizations store sensitive information on various devices such as laptop computers, thumb drives or even desktop computers and servers which could be physically stolen by an attacker, or unwittingly lost by organization staff, resulting in a breach.

Unintended disclosure

Many data breaches are not caused by an attack, but rather by unintentional exposure of sensitive information. For example, employees might view sensitive data and save it to a non-secure location, or IT staff might mistakenly expose a sensitive internal server to the Internet.

A TYPICAL DATA BREACH CYCLE

IMPACT COST OF A DATA BREACH

The annual Cost of a Data Breach Report by IBM offers insights from hundreds of real breaches to help us understand cyber risk in a changing world.

2021 had the highest average cost in 17 years. Data breach costs rose from USD 3.86 million to USD 4.24 million, the highest average total cost in the 17-year history of this report.

IS THERE A WAY TO WEATHER THIS DATA BREACH STORM ?

Yes. There are ways but it isn’t an individual effort rather a team/ organizational effort. This is because the security of data is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Every Individual’s responsibility counts !

• High-grade encryption for sensitive data.
• Periodical Vulnerability & Penetration testing to assess the security standards of organizational infrastructure & stay on top of the curve.
• Enforcing BYOD security policies, like requiring all devices to use a business-grade VPN service and antivirus protection.
• Enforcing strong credentials and multi-factor authentication to encourage better user cybersecurity practices. Encouraging users to start using a password manager can help.
• Educating employees on best security practices and ways to avoid socially engineered attacks.
• Risk Mitigation & Recovery Plans to respond, contain, mitigate and recover back from any possible security attacks.

Keep Calm and Choose AppViewX :)

AppViewX has always been a strong advocate for upholding the highest of industry-certified security standards within the organization as well as ensuring the safety and reliability of all our customers and partners data.

With solutions such as FIPS 140–2 Certified HSM, Password Vault, Automated workflows to push certificates & keys to your devices and a dynamic Access Control & User Privileges system, trust us with your security needs.

WE GOT YOU COVERED ! :D

Our experts are the best people to interact with and guide you through our Product features. Click here to speak to an expert right away and begin securing your organization’s infrastructure. :D