If you were to look back at cybercriminal events of the past decade, you would see that the only doubts of “if” and “when” remain. “If” an organization has no active data security policy and protocols, and even if they have only a few sets of client or consumer records, the “when” will not be far away.
In the past decade, there have been at least eight massive data breaches that took place each year, which almost shook economies. One would think, that by now, business owners and organizations would have grasped the significant value of digital data that they hold. According to the Ponemon Institute, in the US alone, the average size of a data breach is over 25,000 records with a cost of approximately $150 per record. This is the amount of money one would have to pay in damages, in the form of government fines and likely consumer lawsuits. While they could forfeit their email and password details, in data breaches, a large volume of digital profiles could be eliminated or robbed that could contain credit card information, passport scans and address data.
However, despite executives being aware of data security implementation, they are not concerned about executing the right policies in place unless they are shown that their business is at risk of a data breach.
A study conducted in 2018 revealed that among 4000 companies in the US, UK, Spain, Netherlands and Germany, over 70% were unprepared for a data attack. Cut to 2019, even when large-scale organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Facebook and Capital One were breached, organizations continue to stay naive regarding cybersecurity awareness. For a company to realize that it is ready for a data heist, they must go through a security audit beyond the digital realm. However, the first approach is to take a leap of faith and realize that there could be an issue within the company and that their data could be at risk.
For instance, between 2009 to 2019, some of the most massive breaches recorded exposed the type of businesses that stand to be at the highest risk of a data breach. Unfortunately, even though people need to know about data breaches as they happen, several violations remain unreported to avoid future problems. But, the most vulnerable markets revealed that how they lost a colossal number of over 7.7 billion data records. The affected companies included J.P. Morgan Chase, First American, and Under Armour. In 2003, Yahoo suffered a data breach where over 3 billion records were stolen, and this continue to remain the biggest on the list of data breaches. Other well-known businesses that suffered a data hack include Marriott International, Quora, eBay, Facebook and more.
Another study shows how over 65% of data breaches took place in the area of web services. It might appear surprising why web services are particularly targeted more than any other industry? One would think that given the number of attacks on web services, data security would be at its optimum. On the contrary, these remain the weakest link for any organization. It has been seen that even two-factor authentication, considered to be the latest cybersecurity measures, can be duplicated. And regrettably, in most of these companies, no designated person runs the web service. This shows that even though checkups are essential, they are not enough because when critical updates are neglected, it can become easy to use brute force to engineer an unnoticed data attack. Many website builders offer little to no protection on the main page or other landing pages. And while digital threats do not just end there, data attacks are now seen where cybercriminals are pinging servers directly and intercepting payment terminal connections as was seen in the 2014 data attack on Supervalu. Since organizations are constantly updating their websites and changing them, there is a good amount of risk, unless necessary data is stored in a data security container and protected in its entirety such as in digital rights management.
Data security is a management issue that sometimes goes beyond just technology. It can be dangerous to anticipate that your data assets are safeguarded by relying on product developers. Unfortunately, one of the most significant flaws in data security is the mismanagement of data. Without proper oversight, people who are not permitted to access your data files can quickly obtain access. This is especially seen in the number of insider attacks on data where employees extract confidential information through unauthorized access, as paybacks, or due to malicious intent.
Understanding that data security is a real and present aspect of your business is a step in realizing that there could be a problem with your data assets. Obtaining real-time protection and automated threat mitigation through digital rights management can ensure that PDF documents & files are securely safeguarded regardless of where they are stored. Digital rights management protects PDF documents and files in their entirety. This means that no portions of content are usable without the permission of the rights owner. PDF DRM protects the content contained within any PDF document or file through the use of access controls and user restrictions over use. You can make sure that nobody but the owner of the document can distribute protected PDF files and that only authorized users can access them. PDF DRM provides complete PDF protection against unauthorized use and misuse and can be a vital component in protecting against data breaches.
