If there is one thing that a data center is concerned with, aside from maximizing uptime, it is security. In today’s world we constantly hear news stories about security breaches exposing businesses and individuals to danger such as identity theft, information loss, other theft, and more. Security breaches are not just an embarrassing frustration; they are a costly one as well. Large businesses can obviously suffer significant losses but the losses experienced by small and medium-sized businesses are significant as well. Security Intelligence describes the growing risk of security breaches, “Every corner of the organization — from human resources to operations to marketing — is generating, acquiring, processing, storing and sharing more data every day. Cybersecurity threats have conditioned organizations to defend the full depth of this sensitive information and infrastructure from a global threat landscape…IBM and Ponemon Institute are pleased to release the “2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis.” According to our research, the average total cost of a data breach for the participating companies increased 23 percent over the past two years to $3.79 million.” This growing problem and increasing cost is a clear signal that data centers and business must all pay careful attention to security measures to ensure that data is properly protected.
While upping your security protection will certainly involve an up-front investment, if you are protecting critical information such as health, financial, social security, or other top secret records, the cost of a breach will be far more than the cost of protection. For example, cloud security may be ideal for less critical information (i.e. social media) but higher security protection is better for more sensitive information. If you have a smaller business and data center, you may think the risk of a security breach is smaller, statistics are showing that, in general, security breaches are a growing reality for many. Data Center Knowledge points out the frequency of security breaches,” Roughly half of businesses in the U.S. (49 percent) and globally (52 percent) assume that their IT security will be breached sooner or later. This is a recognition of reality, as 77 percent of U.S. businesses and 82 percent globally have experienced between 1 and 5 separate data security incidents in the last year.” Data Center Knowledge also notes that smaller and medium businesses that experience a security breach typically incur a loss, on average, of $86,500. And the cost of liability for data breaches is growing, emphasizing the importance of protecting their customer’s and user’s private information, which Data Center Knowledge points out, “There’s legislation brewing that would make organizations far more accountable for breaches of personal information and require them to pay actual damages to individuals, something he thinks will reverse the trend toward cloud and colocation back to in-house.”
