What's The Cost Of A Security Breach?

As a cheap hosting company, you know that a security breach is the last thing you want. For the past eight years, the Ponemon Institute has been compiling information pertaining to data breaches from companies all around the world to determine the associated costs.

Changes

The report shows that the average costs an organization incurs after a data breach went up a little from $130 to $136 per record lost. They also noted the most common cause: a malicious attack. Two-thirds of data breaches are caused by glitches due to process failures and human error.

Interested to know which industries experienced the highest costs due to data breaches? The healthcare industry was the loser here, averaging about $233 per record lost; the financial industry came in at second with about $215 per record lost; and the pharmaceutical industry spent $207 per record on average. And which industry incurred the lowest cost for a data breach? The retail industry with only $78 per record on average.

Similarities

Some data looks about the same as last year. For example, the US and Germany pay the most after a data breach occurs ($188 and $199, respectively). These countries also have the highest total cost: the US loses $5.4 million, Germany $4.8 million.

There is a big difference when you compare other countries with each other. Why? Each country is different in regards to the type of attack or threat, and let's not forget data protection laws vary by country. For example, Australia, the UK, Germany, and the US have stronger consumer protection regulations and laws, which leads to a higher level of cybersecurity and privacy.

The biggest problem businesses and organizations face: loss of revenue. This issue is especially problematic for the financial or healthcare industries. When a data breach occurs in these industries, consumers become more hesitant, which leads to a loss of trust in that business or brand.

Next Steps

It is imperative you rely on best practices to ensure the safety of your data. If you are constantly working hard to improve your data protection strategy, then you are definitely doing all you can in order to ensure the safety of your data. Here are some tips from Symantec regarding the best ways to prevent losing everything after a data breach:

-Train employees on proper storage and use of confidential information that might be on your cheap hosting servers to prevent accidental loss or data breaches.
-Rely on data loss prevention technology to find sensitive data in order to prevent it from leaving your organization.
-Encrypt all sensitive data, and rely on numerous authentication solutions.
-Implement an incident response plan in the event a security breach does occur. Don't forget to put a plan in place for notifying customers of the issue!

Security breaches will always be an issue, but steps can be taken to prevent your company from losing money. This will help your cheap hosting company protect itself as best it can.