How Data Breaches Can Endanger Your Business

In July 2018, the security of a startup company was breached, and the data of 21 million users were exposed for two hours, where hackers stole information such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers. An institution, Hong Kong’s Department of Health also reported falling prey to a cyberattack that made their system inaccessible for two weeks. Ashley Madison, a Canadian online dating service also had their 10 GB of data stolen and dumped (account details and identifiable information) onto the deep web by hackers.

All of this just goes to show that data breaches are one of the most significant digital risks and challenges that businesses face. Data breaches put companies in a very dire position, and that is just not good for their business.  

How Data Breaches Occur

Before you find out how you can prevent data breaches in your company, you first need to understand the ways that data breaches can occur. It doesn’t matter what kind of industry you belong to – retail customers, internet-based platforms, or others – you are still susceptible to having your system breached by hackers.

It is important for you to familiarize yourself and your company with the following tactics for data breaching:

Social Engineering Attacks

Someone may call your employee posing as a customer to manipulate them into revealing confidential information or someone may send an email to your employee pretending to be a client and asking them to give up private company information. Any person pretending to be someone they are not to extract information from your company is carrying out a social engineering attack.

Phishing Attack

A cybercriminal may send an email to your employee pretending to be from a reputable entity and ask them for confidential information. That cybercriminal may show an email address or tailor his message in such a way that it will be difficult for your employee to determine if it’s fake or legit.

No VPN

Your employees working from home are at more risk of falling prey to such traps because they are not protected by the company’s networking system. These employees may connect to an unsecured network in a public place or a shared network that leaves their devices vulnerable to data breaches and unauthorized access.

If these employees do not have any VPN activated, they are more likely to fall prey to such cyberattacks.

Data breaches happen in many ways, but you can still take measures to protect your business from any data breaches. One way to ensure your business remains protected is by signing up with service providers that are contactable if there’s an emergency. For example, the Xfinity customer service number is always reachable, which ensures on-hand support for any emergency.

How Breaches Impact Your Company

The effect of data breaches is deeply felt in all parts of every company, from legal to marketing to operations. Here’s the possible damage a company can experience through a data breach:

Financial Ruin

This is the most obvious impact that a data breach can have on an organization. A single attack can make a company suffer millions of dollars of loss. A loss like this can ruin even a mid-size company.

Reputational Damage

Your clients and customers have entrusted their personal data to your company. If the company system has been breached, that could make them lose their trust in your company, or even worse, the business relationship with you.

The cyberattacks on your system can ruin your business’ reputation, leading to other losses as well, e.g. loss of customers/clients, sales, etc.

Zero Productivity

Any cyberattack that brings the company operations to a standstill is dangerous.

If your system has been hacked, your employees may not be able to access the data, system, network, etc. This can lead to a loss of productivity for your company.

Legal Liability

When clients or customers share their information with your company, your company becomes subject to data privacy laws meaning that if the data in your company has been breached, legal action can be taken against your company.