In 2020, Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report states that there are six ways it can occur; criminal hacking, human error, social engineering, malware, unauthorized use and physical action. While the report highlights that criminal hacking accounts for 45% of data breaches, it is crucial to note that breaches do not just stem from external threats. Internal factors such as human errors account for 22% of breaches, when sensitive information is shared with the wrong recipient or there is a lack of control measures implemented to protect data. It is tedious but essential for IT security professionals monitor threats that arise from both internal and external sources.
With widespread adoption of remote work, cyberattacks have increased by 11% since 2018.
It is a worrying trend not just for CISOs, but for organizations at large. Even huge organizations like LinkedIn and China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group Holding have not been spared. In fact, both organizations have unfortunately experienced data breaches which have been reported as one of the 15 biggest data breaches in the 21st century.
Cybersecurity breaches signal impending financial loss as the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million as of 2020. They also lead to disruptions to the business as resources must channeled to manage them. According to IBM, the average lifecycle of a breach was 280 days from identification to containment. Once breached, organizations lose the trust of their customers and partners and suffer a diminished reputation.
There’s no guarantee that breaches can be avoided altogether, but there are definitely measures you can take to reduce your risk of being breached and minimize its impact if it happens to you.
A good place to start is with identifying what’s at risk. You need a firm understanding on where your most sensitive files are – those that contain personal data or business confidential data. Next, you’ll need to map your employees access to these files. Dathena’s Data and User Risk Assessment product enables you to do just that. In 48 hours using our data leakage prevention tool, we automatically identify your sensitive files and generate a full data risk assessment based on your users’ access to sensitive files. Giving you that much needed visibility into your data landscape.
Once you know what’s at risk, you’ll need to classify them and implement protection using your DLP tools. Manual classification is no easy feat, it is time consuming and prone to errors much like any other human processes. Using Augmented Data Protection, you can leverage Dathena’s AI-based classification to categorize your files according to meaningful business categories and confidentiality levels. From the dashboard, you can then generate DLP policies accordingly to ensure that your most sensitive data is well protected. By doing so, you’ll be able to minimize your risk exposure and likelihood of being breached.
Dathena’s products come with a two weeks free trial, so stress no more and start your data protection journey with us.
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