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Over the last decade, businesses have shifted dramatically. Now, there are new aspects that need to be prioritized for the improvement of your business. It’s easy to put focus into marketing, customer service, and research development of products. However, there are more important aspects of business aside from these.
In this day and age, digital security is no longer a secondary aspect of the business. In fact, it is one of the most important aspects of business that every smart company and business owner should begin thinking about as soon as possible. It can potentially make or break your business.
Data Breaches In Business
Over the last decade, internet and hospitality companies have been the target of numerous data breaches. What do these two industries have in common? They are industries that handle heaps worth of data. For hackers, these industries are a treasure trove of data that they can sell on the black market.
Currently, the biggest data breach in history is the attack on Zynga in 2019. This resulted in 218 user accounts being compromised. The data stolen were phone numbers, user account names, passwords, and much more. That’s only one case. There have been countless other cases of the data breach that resulted in millions becoming victims.
What’s worse is that hackers really don’t discriminate. They’ll target any business – big or small. So long as the business has data to protect, there’s money to be made on the end of hackers. Every smart business owner should know how important it is to ramp up digital security measures nowadays.
If you’re not yet sold on the idea, then here are a few reasons why.
People Are More Cautious With the Companies They Trust
If there’s one thing that’s certain with today’s consumers, it’s that they are more open to sharing their data with companies. On the other hand, they are also more cautious with the companies they share their data with too.
If you aren’t transparent about what you do with your data and what steps you are taking to protect it, there’s little chance for them to trust you.
As a business owner, you should do your best to ensure that your customer’s data is protected well. Look for the best way to store data and then implement it for your business. Let your customers know what type of measures you are putting ahead of them so that they know their data is safe with you.
Very important: keep in mind though that you shouldn’t expose too much about your data protection habits. This can be used against you as well. Just give your customers a glimpse into the steps that you are taking so that they at least know how well prepared you are for hacks and attacks.
Regulations Require It
Internet laws serve to protect both companies and consumers from problems that plague digital cyberspace. Part of their drive to protect consumers is to regulate the way data is managed across all industries. That being said, there are now data laws that require you to be more transparent about how you manage data as well.
Regulatory commissions strive to ensure that companies do their best with regards to how they protect the data of their customers. In most cases, your company will undergo audits to ensure that you comply with the data laws as well.
For your company, failure to meet the standards does have its consequences. For one, you might not be able to operate your business. Regulatory commissions might also hand out fines if ever something goes awry with your customer’s data in the future.
For now, it will seem rather expensive to incorporate better data protection practices for your business. However, what’s worth noting is that the fines you have to pay and the legal matters that come after a data breach are far more costly for your business so staying safe is the more cost-efficient method.
Reputation is Easy to Destroy And Hard to Build
If you do become the center of a data breach and you pay for the damages caused by the incident, you can probably recover from the financial losses in due time. What’s hard though is rebuilding the reputation that has been destroyed after the incident.
People can be very unforgiving when it comes to data breaches and rightfully so. It shows a company’s lack of concern and accountability for the data that their customers share with them after all. Even if you do recover from the financial losses caused by the incident, it will take a lot of time and effort to rebuild the reputation that was soiled.
In most cases, companies actually struggle in recovering from this aspect. Till now, Zynga is suffering from the drawbacks caused by their data breach. The same goes for Yahoo who was on the receiving end of a data breach as well.
Both companies have suffered losses beyond what’s considered financial. Although things have become better for both companies, people are still worried about sharing their data with these companies to this date.
Prevent Loss Of Progress
Data breaches are a big problem for businesses in many ways. One of which is that they can make you lose all of the progress you’ve made. Once data is stolen, there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to get it back unless you have a backup of it. Having a cloud backup is crucial these days, so check this website and find the right backup solution for your needs.
When hackers or digital threats attack companies, they don’t just target data, they also target company data too. In cases like these, hackers lock all data behind ransomware. With this, you won’t have access to all of your data until you pay the ransom asked by the hackers.
Data safety is one aspect of business that you should always work on. There have benefits to having a secure database. Perhaps more importantly though, data safety protects your consumers from what lies beyond the internet and the people that want to take advantage of the system for monetary gain.
