The importance of the cloud has brought the need for data security to the forefront of many people’s minds. All this concern is within good reason because the number and impact of data breaches has increased drastically in the last few years.
Furthermore, outside forces are not the only risk to companies in terms of data breaches as the number of breeches from employees has increased as well.
What Does a Data Breach Really Cost?
A survey from the Ponemon Institute suggests that roughly 3% of all devices used for enterprise purposes have malware infections.
Additionally, this leads organizations to spend 13 percent of their IT department’s total budget to keep malware infections from spreading and creating havoc. For smaller organizations, having to spend this kind of money can be disastrous.
In addition to the above organizations, another 54 percent said they had knowledge of an infection within the last two years. Even more frightening, 12 percent said they had no idea whether their enterprise was infected at all.
All in all, an enterprise that experiences a data breach stands to suffer from a devastating amount of data loss, which, in turn, leads to monetary losses.
In the event that an enterprise’s whole mobile fleet suffers from a malware infection, Ponemon experts estimate that the total monetary hit (from both direct and indirect costs) could exceed $26,000,000. The size of the enterprise had no bearing on this figure, which stands as good motivation to keep an infection from occurring in the first place.
Beyond Monetary Costs
Aside from the financial devastation that can come with a data breach, an enterprise’s reputation can be severely hurt as well (think Target). Another issue is the risk that comes to their contact list, sensitive employee information and other confidential information.
As if losing $26 million would not sting badly enough, an infected enterprise would also then have to deal with the fallout once the public learns of the breach.
OnePoll suggests that over three-quarters of those surveyed (86%) stated they would not be likely to do business with a company who suffered from a data breach.