You’ve seen the headlines.  Data breach after data breach, with each one more sophisticated than the last.  In today’s ever expanding threat landscape, how do you know whether your data is really secure? The answer matters. The statistics tell us so:

• Over 169 million personal records were exposed in 2015, stemming from 781 publicized breaches across the financial, business, education, government and healthcare sectors.
• The average cost of a data breach was $7 million in 2016, a 7 percent increase over the previous year.
• Heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, life science and financial services, tend to have a per capita data breach cost substantially higher than the overall average of $221 per compromised record.
• Post-breach costs, which include special investigative activities, remediation activities, legal expenditures, product discounts, identity protection services, and regulatory interventions, saw a 5% increase in 2016.
• Putting incident response plans and teams in place, enforcing extensive use of encryption, and training your employees on security risks were shown to reduce the cost of data breaches.

A proven way to get a better handle on your data and security is through a managed security service. But therein lies the rub: Eighty-one percent of data breach victims surveyed in the 2015 Trustwave Global Security Report said they had neither a system nor a managed security service in place to ensure they could self-detect data breaches, relying instead on notification from an external party. This was the case despite the fact that self-detected breaches take just 14.5 days to contain from their intrusion date, whereas breaches detected by an external party take an average of 154 days to contain.

Buying a range of low-end security products in hopes that they will be able to detect emerging threats is not an effective way to keep your data secure. Today’s businesses have a critical need to secure data both at rest and in transit. The old practice of setting controls and relying upon the tools to prevent an attack provides a false sense of security, and you are more likely to experience a compromise without even knowing it.

Without a fundamental understanding of persistent and emerging threats, you are already at a disadvantage in the face of today’s hackers.  Knowledge of potential vulnerabilities in your network, regularly performed assessments and testing, as well as consistent monitoring and maintenance are critical steps in keeping your valuable data safe.

A partnership with a managed security services provider will minimize the risks to your data. As regulations evolve across industry sectors and compliance becomes even more imperative, we will make sure that you adhere to all requirements now and in the future.

True security is all about your approach. It’s a mindset that informs how you do everything in your business environment. It transforms your entire corporate environment, fostering a true security-centric approach to business. Not every quarter. Every day.

Contact us today to discover how partnering with SLPowers, a security-minded managed services provider, is the most important investment your organization can make.

Categories: Current News and Events, Data Security, Security Breach