A company’s sensitive information is stored on either local machine, cloud servers, and enterprise databases. A data breach can be defined as viewing an individual’s personal medical file without authorization or sharing a sensitive document without permission. When a company accidentally exposes data, it might be due to unintentional disclosure of data inside the job of a previous or current employee or a result of a hacker attack.
A data breach can crash down a company, and data exfiltration is a significant threat in any organization.
There is an estimate of hundreds of data breaches every year and had a massive impact on the company and the individuals involved. Cybercriminals became more sophisticated and knew the brand value of a company’s data.
On March 9, 2021, Infosys, an Indian multinational technology company, and Interbrand, a New York-based Marketing consultancy, announced that the world’s top 100 brands’ brand value might amount to $223 billion if a data breach occurs. According to the research, the higher brand value that is at risk from data breaches is from industries such as Technology, Financial Services, and Automotive. Simultaneously, Consumer goods and Luxury brands have a higher value in a proportion of the company’s net income.
|
Industry |
Brand value at risk |
Equivalent Percentage of 2020 net income |
|
Technology |
$29 billion |
Up to 53% |
|
Financial Services |
$2.6 billion |
Up to 52% |
|
Automotive |
$4.2 billion |
Up to 77% |
|
Consumer Goods |
$5 billion |
Up to 114% |
|
Luxury |
$2.4 billion |
Up to 115% |
One of the most critical assets in a company is data, especially the ones classified as sensitive. Some companies misinterpret the value of investing in cybersecurity. When a company encounters a data breach, the business and data are in jeopardy, and the consequences are detrimental. A data breach technical investigation is expensive and requires a significant time on data recovery. Also, breach announcements are lousy publicity that can affect the company’s reputation, trust, and future.
Business reputation is an essential aspect of a company.
Nowadays, customers choose a brand they can trust to protect their personal information as the value of privacy and security matters. An exposure of shared personal information into a company that suffered a data breach can result in identity theft.
To prevent data breaches, companies should re-evaluate the deployed security measures and plan to deal with the future’s possible challenges. Companies may also perform vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, mitigation, and recovery plans and attend training and awareness to prevent data breaches.
