Companies accumulate massive amounts of data, whether it is intellectual property or customer and employee information. Data is a critical asset: it’s undeniable. If your business users have appropriate access to data, they can perform their jobs more efficiently and effectively, and they can analyze the data to derive key business intelligence that drives better business decisions.
But if data isn’t protected from breaches, it can also be a liability. This blog explores the revenue risks that enterprises face when they do not protect their data. We also cover the benefits they gain when they unlock their data using technology that enables both secure data sharing and compliance.
TAMING DATA SPRAWL AND MANAGING VULNERABILITIES
Organizations are obligated to satisfy consumer demands for data privacy and to comply with industry and government compliance regulations. This is a constant and evolving challenge as data is typically distributed in various silos across an enterprise, as well as on-premises, in cloud environments, and in hybrid environments.
Data is also dynamic. It not only moves among different locations, but it is also often updated by business users or the customers themselves. The cybersecurity vulnerabilities are numerous, and with frequent cloud migrations and new applications used by organizations, cybersecurity professionals may feel like they are playing a game of “whack-a-mole.”
FINANCIAL AND REPUTATIONAL RISKS AND LIABILITIES
Information security professionals are very aware that data breaches are increasing and the costs of a data breach can be staggering. These costs are both tangible and intangible:
- IT and administrative mitigation investments
- Lost productivity
- Loss of customer trust (if a breach becomes public knowledge)
- Potential litigation fees incurred from angry customers or partners
- Regulatory fines for non-compliance
An IBM report titled “Costs of a data breach 2022” states that the average cost of a data breach in the United States is $9.44M, and $4.35M globally.
LOCKING DOWN DATA IS INSUFFICIENT
To mitigate the risk of data loss — whether from human error or internal or external thieves — InfoSec teams and other cybersecurity professionals have typically tried to lock data under strict security walls. Often, because of legacy systems implemented in various silos across an organization at different times, cybersecurity professionals are stuck with a patchwork of security tools and methodologies that are difficult to review or audit. These legacy approaches tie the hands of security teams and limit organizational efficiency and innovation.
Traditional data protection is rigid and limits or blocks data access entirely, on-premise, in the cloud, or across borders.
In some cases, legacy solutions can create more cyber vulnerabilities and may even damage the integrity of data.
ROADBLOCKS TO EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVITY
A Forrester Total Economic Impact study found that:
The ability to leverage new data sets or leverage data in new ways can help businesses accomplish a variety of goals, including developing new products and revenue streams, enhancing sales and marketing techniques and effectiveness, and improving customer experience.
New application security reviews may require significant amounts of time, causing delays in usability and productivity. Such roadblocks result in holdups that directly impact customer service and support as well as business planning. Line of business managers are finding more and more reasons to use and analyze their data.
Security hurdles get in the way of organizational improvements, business optimization, and future-forward initiatives.
THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF ROLE-BASED ACCESS
The goal of data protection solutions today is to prevent data breaches while making it easier to tap the value of your data. In other words, enable access to data but not to the extent that you compromise data privacy, security, or compliance.
That may seem like a daunting, impossible task, but it isn’t. A fine-grain, role-based approach to data protection — at the field level — can facilitate frictionless data use and security. Centralized data administration policies can control which data users are allowed to see what kind of sensitive data. This requires protecting the data itself rather than the systems that touch, store, or manage it. When you protect data at the source, whether it is at rest, in use, or in transit, the protection goes wherever the data goes.
The economic benefits of this approach are multi-fold: reduced costs of security reviews, reduced risk of data breaches (and any related non-compliance fines or consumer litigation), and accelerated business innovation.
Download our Forrester TEI report today to see the revenue impact of Protegrity’s data protection platform and services for your business today!