This post was originally published here by Will Houcheime.
In the past few years, some major organizations have underestimated the importance of maintaining security over their data and infrastructure as they migrated to the cloud. This has led to many devastating breaches that have affected hundreds of millions of people around the world. Public corporations, private companies, and even government agencies have all been impacted by these attacks. For any organization that handles sensitive data like personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), or payment card industry data (PCI), a strong security posture is not just a nice-to-have – it is an absolute necessity.
In Bitglass’ latest report, we researched some of the biggest breaches that have occurred in the last three years, including those that shook Equifax, Yahoo, and Facebook. The purpose of our research was to examine the causes behind these attacks as well as the effects that they had on the compromised organizations.
Publicly traded companies that are breached often experience a significant financial loss, along with an average of a 7.5% drop in stock value. In some cases, companies never make a recovery in the stock market and deal with legal cases that can last years. Cybercriminals repeatedly find ways to gain access to the data of public organizations and appropriate their sensitive information; however, these are not the only targets.
Many times, hackers attack private organizations (pre-IPO companies like Uber) and even government agencies like the NSA. Bitglass’ latest report also evaluates some of these attacks, highlighting the importance of finding a security solution that protects data on any device, anywhere, from any threat. The last few years have proven that any entity is susceptible to having its sensitive data compromised – even with applications’ native security tools.
Photo:TNW
