How much money can be lost in cases of data leaks, whether losses are limited to money and how to prevent it – we analyze it in this article.
«He who owns the information, owns the world» — the famous quote of the banker Nathan Rothschild is more relevant today than ever before. Most modern companies depend on different information types, and that’s why they are vulnerable. Indeed, data loss is expensive.
There are sad statistics: in 2018 more than 3.3 billion data leaks were detected only in the first six months of the year, according to data by Breach Level. Such large companies like Bloomingdales, Macy's и Reddit also were among victims.
A significant portion of leaks is caused by hardware failures, malicious software, human mistakes, including unintentional disclosure of information, natural disasters that cause physical destruction of information, and much more.
Data leaks in figures:
- 18,525,816 (more than 18 million records) every day
- 771,909 — every hour
- 12,865 — every minute
- 214 — every second
The Cost of Loss
Data leak is expensive. The research of information loss, conducted by the Ponemon Institute shows that the global average cost is USD 3.86 million (USD 148 per record).
The cost of data leak depends on leak size:
- Less than 10,000 cracked records — the average total cost is $1.9 million
- 50,000 or more cracked records — $ 6,3 million
- 1 million records — $ 40 million
- 50 million — $ 350 million to lose
The IDC consulting company provides the following figures: 80% of small businesses have experienced at least 1 downtime, the price of which is from 82,200 to 256,000 USD per episode, or from 137 to 427 USD per minute.
Time is money
It may take 197 days to detect the problem, and another 69 days to stop the leak. There is direct dependency: the more data that is lost, the longer it will take to recover it. In general, only restoring information after a failure takes 18.5 hours, not to mention dealing with the consequences.
It may take 197 days to detect the problem, and another 69 days to stop the leak. There is direct dependency: the more data that is lost, the longer it will take to recover it. In general, only restoring information after a failure takes 18.5 hours, not to mention dealing with the consequences.
After heavy data losses, 43% of companies permanently cease their activities because they are unable to fully restore operations, 51% of companies close within two years and only 6% stay in business, according to Gartner.
Consequences
Unpleasant consequences of data leakage include productivity decrease and loss of opportunities in business, and also legal expense and fine payments in case of users’ personal data has been compromised. And after all, damage to reputation is a sad result. Some companies can get a requirement to make public information on data leak.
Is preventing data leakage possible?
The risk to lose important information always exists but we can significantly decrease it with baseline operations for data security providing:
- creation of data security policy in a company
- providing a backup system
- training for employees
The "3-2-1" rule means storing 3 copies of information in 2 different physical formats, and that 1 copy is remoted from the main infrastructure.
Unfortunately, many small and medium-sized business owners believe that they can do without special IT solutions for recovery in case of failures and leaks.
To avoid falling into the sad list of victims losing their important information and to save money, you should take care in protecting your company from possible leaks and failures. To do this, we advise that you use the cloud storage service in one of the most reliable data centers in the Czech Republic. Your information will be stored on independent servers, and our specialists will set up a backup system to meet your requirements.
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