Posted by Data Privacy is more important today than ever before. The Covid-19 pandemic has transitioned online most of the businesses with the work-from-home model and has built workplace flexibility.
However, for, threat actors, it is a newfound opportunity, ensuring new challenges for data security. There has been a consistent and steady rise of cyberattacks, data breaches and more across the sector, for organisations and companies of all sizes.
The current situation has forced businesses to reconsider their cybersecurity framework and posture. Any kind of attack, data breach, or leakage sets a bad example on business capabilities, build reputational damage, financial loss as well as long term loss of customers.
Here are some reasons why data privacy matters to every business.
Privacy matters to the work-from-home model:
The BYOD (Bring your own device) was popular earlier too, matching the lowered operational cost and increased productivity. However, with Covid-19, the WFH model, adopting on a large scale has raised several security concerns for several businesses.
First of all, the employees are no longer patched to the office networks, which could have ensured a layer of security and compliance. With multiple devices used to access the network, it introduces numerous vulnerabilities too.
With complete endpoint monitoring, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technologies can prevent employees, third-party vendors, and contractors from intentionally or unintentionally leaking data. Sensitive data can be scanned, encrypted, or deleted remotely when found or blocked from being transferred.
Privacy matters to your financial health:
India has also gone through a series of cyber scams – Aadhaar card, a database of medical records being leaked, and more. India is currently witnessing a change in the pattern of the cyber-crimes, with attacks and breaches turning more sophisticated.
As per the recent IBM study this year, the average cost incurred to a company because of a data breach has reached over Rs 14 crore in 2020, an increase of 9.4 per cent from last year, which translates into Rs 5,522 for a single lost or stolen record (an increase of 10 per cent from 2019).
Data being an asset to the company; data protection has always been a concern for the organisations, and a host of factors have made DLP an even more valuable tool.
Privacy matters to your customers:
Customer trust and loyalty are essential for building a successful business. Gaining the trust would take years for brands and one small mistake and it shall become a tough re-sell.
Many individuals share personal and confidential information with the customers, like the PAN Card, Aadhaar Card, etc., trusting the brand and its security outline.
Not just limited to transactions or identity documents, customers have been shopping online, uploading photos, sharing their reviews on purchases, and more. With Covid-19, the volume of customer data has brought unprecedented challenges to handle.
Any data breach, leakage, or theft caused by an insider or outsider threat can have serious repercussions on the business, impacting the brand and disrupting the customer experience.
To curb such a situation, businesses should adopt the right security tools with endpoint security in business processes to mitigate the risks from the expanded operating environment.
These tools include User Activity Monitoring (UAM), Secure Information and Event Management Systems (SIEM), User Behaviour Analytics (UBA) software, and last but not least Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions.
With the growing cybersecurity concerns worldwide, countries and industries, have put greater emphasis on safeguarding both PII and IP data. In India, the proposed data protection law begins on a promising note.
Though the Data Privacy Bill is yet to be passed in the parliament the stringent law goes beyond personal data protection. Organisations too have to upgrade and evolve data protection policies, to avoid any financial and reputational data risk. In hindsight, the regulatory framework in today’s ever-growing digital world is the need of the hour.
(This article is written by Filip Cotfas, Channel Manager – CoSoSys. The views expressed in this article are of the author.)