In the wake of rising cybersecurity attacks and data breaches, it’s only a matter of how and when you’re going to be attacked. While some organizations have the resources, time, and money to invest in recovering from a data breach, others simply can’t afford it.
The 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that many businesses do not consider security as their top concern and think about it only occasionally.
A data breach can happen overnight and cause havoc, leaving a company struggling to recover from the irreparable damage. Attackers may steal credentials, sensitive information of customers, or cause other loss of data.
What happens when a data breach takes place?
A data breach can have severe consequences that can hamper the overall growth of a company. One of the major impacts of a data breach is the financial costs which may include hefty fines, penalties, insurance issues, recovery costs, lawsuits, and revenue loss.
When a data breach occurs, the company needs to investigate how the breach took place, the damage it has caused, how it can be contained, and how it can be prevented in the future. These investigation costs can be considerable as they require complex levels of forensics.
In addition to this, if your company doesn’t have cybersecurity insurance, you may need to pay for additional costs upfront. Further, vendors, employees, and customers may sue the company for their personal details being leaked or shared.
Even if you have security standards in place, you will be ultimately responsible for paying the legal fees associated with the data breach.
If the breach has a far-reaching, wide impact, the company might have to limit its operations until the threat is completely eliminated. If business activities are shut down for a long period of time, customers might not be able to avail their services or products. And when this happens, they may switch to other competitors.
To help you understand the long-term effects of a data breach, here are some insights about how data breaches can impact your business:
Image Courtesy: Cypress Data Defense
Aaron Cure is the Principal Security Consultant at Cypress Data Defense and an instructor and contributing author for the Dev544 Secure Coding in .NET course. After 10 years in the U.S. Army, I decided to switch my focus to developing security tools and performing secure code reviews, penetration testing, static source code analysis, and security research.