In some form or another, cybersecurity has always been crucial. Recently, however, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become increasingly important. This is simply because the risk of data breaches and data loss as a result of cybercrime has increased exponentially. And with more people using the internet than ever before, this risk is likely to increase even further.
Because of the increased risk, cybersecurity is critical to the future of your business. Simply put, with an effective information security (Info Sec) strategy, you’ll ensure that your and your customers’ data stays safe.
The problem is, however, that, due to technology becoming more sophisticated and cybercriminals using more aggressive approaches in their attacks, basic strategies are no longer good enough.
As a result, you need a multi-layered approach that protects every part of your network. Why is this important and, more importantly, what should your strategy consist of? In this post, we’ll look at these questions in more detail.
A Brief Look at the Statistics
At the foundation of understanding why cybersecurity is so critical to your business, is understanding the risk. So, it’s important to consider some cybersecurity statistics that illustrate this risk better.
Although cybercrime has always been a problem, its incidence is up by 600% as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because cyber criminals use the pandemic to go after employees. These employees then download malicious attachments or click on suspicious links.
Another contributor to this is that remote work has become increasingly popular. Employees working from home often don’t have the same level of security as they have at their offices. This makes it challenging to reduce the risk.
More worryingly is that, when a data breach happens, it takes companies, on average, 207 days to identify it. Also, 43% of data breaches are because of cyberattacks against small businesses. And these are the businesses who simply can’t afford it.
Yet, despite this, only 16% of companies are prepared to deal with cyber risk and its implications. As such, more than 77% of companies do not have a cybersecurity response plan. Even worse, only 5% of companies’ folders, and by implication their data, is protected.
Why You Need a Layered Approach?
Nowadays, in your business, you’ll use several applications and platforms. You’ll also store and share data in a variety of ways. The thing is cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated. As such, they’re using more advanced methods of attack to target businesses and the more applications and platforms your company uses the more vectors those criminals have.
This, means that a basic cybersecurity strategy will not be good enough. Firewall and antivirus solution will no longer protect your business. Thus, you’ll need to incorporate a range of technologies in your strategy to ensure that your business’s data stays protected.
Beyond the security aspects, a variety of data privacy regulations have recently been introduced and when you have a cyber security event these laws apply to the loss of your data. These laws include:
- GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
- CPRA – California Privacy Rights Act
- PIPL – Personal Information Protection Law
As you’ll likely deal with customer data, your strategy should then not only meet but exceed the requirements of these regulations. If it doesn’t, the penalties for not complying can be severe.
Data: Digital Gold
Although you may have some tools and solutions to protect your systems from threats, the question is: What happens if a breach or data loss occurs?
This is where our data tokenization solutions come in. TokenizerPlus (Tokenizer+) allows you to confidently apply a multi-layered approach to protecting your data at rest and in transit and protect the underlying sensitive data itself. As a result, we’re instrumental to your multi-layered cybersecurity solution.
In other words, you need some form of control when this data is outside your network. As a result, you should implement technologies like encryption, tokenization, and redaction that help you to protect your company’s and customers’ data. In turn, this ensures data security and data privacy.
Bottom Line
Considering how technology changes and evolves, basic cybersecurity strategies are no longer good enough to protect your business against the risk of cybercrime. As a result, you need a multi-layered approach that protects every part of your network and ensure data safety and privacy.
As part of this strategy, TeraDact incorporates TokenizerPlus and RedactorPlus offers a robust solution to secure information sharing. It efficiently checks, versions, and releases sensitive documents to a multi-level access audience and has full tokenization and redaction capabilities. To learn more about TokenizerPlus, or RedactorPlus, and how these tools can help you protect your data against risk, contact us today.