The Ponemon Institute LLC reports after speaking to 58 U.S.-based firms and about 252 organizations around the world, that the costs of breaches and recovery are steadily on the increase. Kaspersky Labs also did a similar study, and although the dollar numbers don’t match exactly due to study variations, the truth is there are significant costs involved for a business during the breach remediation and recovery processes. Malicious code has been determined to be the cause in most attacks, while third-party suppliers have been found to be the usual culprits.
While organizations are trying to figure out the best security services to use for their tight budgets, Kaspersky advises to consider first a baseline set of technologies. “The first and primary objective should be to choose an endpoint security solution, which has the best possible protection as their primary selection criteria. Only after satisfying this need should organizations look to invest additional budget into ‘layers’ of security that are provided by products and services that address the vulnerabilities and exposures that are specific to their infrastructure, user base and business processes,” said Kaspersky Lab’s North American managing director.
According to Ponemon, actual threats are more in the application layer than the network layer. Then again, just applying technology is not the answer to minimize breaches. Privileges need to be reduced to the least number of people, so monitoring becomes more efficient for recording when accesses occur and at which applications. Studies and breach aftermaths have shown that reducing access to data is a smart choice. All said and done continuous data security is important and organizations would miss the point if they thought about ROI instead of their obligation to protect their customers’ data.
Talk to the experts at Omega ATC. They have dealt with data security for small to mid-size to large merchants. Omega has also worked with breached entities. Phone 636-557-7777 or email Security@OmegaSecure.com.
