What Puts Your Corporate Data At Risk?

Imagine that you were a business that earned its money by keeping people’s secrets. Now imagine what would happen to your reputation if it turned out that you wrote every secret down in a notebook and left it somewhere it could be easily stolen by thieves. And then it was.

On the surface, this might sound like a far-fetched hypothetical, but it really isn’t. Every day companies receive sensitive information from customers they would likely consider so private they may well not share it with their closest friends or even family. That might be financial information, health records, proprietary business secrets, relationship information, personal messages, and any number of other confidential pieces of data. By doing so, they put an enormous amount of faith in companies that they expect to be respected by being kept secret.

The problem? While many companies do keep up their side of the bargain, there’s also – unfortunately – no shortage of examples of scenarios in which this trust breaks down. In some cases, this may be a company acting in a way that seems to violate user trust, like willingly selling user data to unscrupulous third parties. 

However, in others it’s the result of data breaches: incidents in which the private data of users or customers is exposed or stolen through a cyber attack or security failure. Worryingly, these data breaches are increasingly commonplace, large-scale, and varied in terms of the threats that allow them to happen. It’s a reminder of why cloud data protection measures are essential.

Data breaches in action

One recent example of a data breach came in March 2021 when a database belonging to IDC Games was published on a dark web forum. This leak included information regarding email addresses, usernames, and hashed passwords for 4 million records.

Just a few months later, in June 2021, a sample collection of data from a much larger trove of data associated with 700 million LinkedIn users (which included email addresses, phone numbers, geolocation information, and more) was posted by an individual named GOD User TomLiner on a dark web forum. This breach reportedly affected more than 90 percent of LinkedIn’s users. 

Data breaches can cause companies damage in a number of ways. They can result in operational downtime or the loss of proprietary information. They can also harm the reputation of a company, with dented consumer trust stemming from the breach. Even if the breach is the result of an attack from an outside entity, such as a cyber attacker, many users may be less likely to trust a business with their data if they perceive that the company hasn’t done enough to safeguard their information. In some cases, businesses may wind up paying users in some form – either in an attempt to win back their faith (for instance, by offering them a free subscription for several months) or as the result of potential lawsuits.

Increasingly, one other way companies may be directly hurt is through fines for failing to adequately protect data. While data breaches are on the rise, so too are data protection regulations growing more widespread around the world. Starting in May 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced some of the world’s harshest fines for breaches of data protection laws – with penalties of up to 4 percent of a company’s annual revenue. Other countries are also instituting safeguards that both compel companies to reveal information about breaches in a timely manner and hand out fines for failing to take the proper precautions when keeping data safe.

Where do breaches come from?

Just like there is no one singular way that data breaches affect companies, so too is there no one way that data breaches can happen. Attacks can be the result of criminal hacking efforts, social engineering attacks (such as “phishing” emails that try and trick legitimate users into clicking questionable links or otherwise sharing information), malware, and even human error resulting from a failure to properly protect data – not for malicious reasons, but purely through a lapse in judgment. 

A recent survey laid out the scope of these perceived threats to data privacy, showing that 58 percent of security leader respondents felt that cybercriminals represented their biggest threat, followed by 40 percent who worried about internal employees and authorized users. There were also concerns about network and cloud service providers, in addition to contractors and suppliers.

Introduce the safeguards

Companies must do their utmost to protect against data breaches. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools that they can use to safeguard against threats. So-called “zero trust” cloud security solutions can greatly minimize data risk. Cybersecurity measures can reveal who is accessing sensitive data, as well as what they are doing with it, along with providing notifications about critical risks and incidents. 

By combining automated tools with human safeguards it’s possible to achieve a high level of protection against data breach threats. It’s the smartest investment any company that uses sensitive data can make.