Every Company is at Risk for a Potentially Devastating Data Breach

The numbers are clear – every company is at risk for a potentially devastating data breach, and the stakes have never been higher. In a challenging economy, no business can afford a data breach.

2020 has been a wild ride all around, and it’s been extra bumpy for cybersecurity. The pandemic, the Great Work From Home, the rapidly evolving business landscape, a booming Dark Web, financial uncertainty, and a huge surge in phishing as bad actors take advantage of the tumult are all contributing to setting this year up to be a record-breaking year for data breaches.

These 2020 data breach statistics clearly show that this year is on its way to being increasingly difficult for cybersecurity professionals – and increasingly dangerous for companies.

Top 10 2020 Data Breach Statistics

• 49% of US companies have experienced a data breach
• 43% of breach victims were small businesses
• 80% of hacking breaches involve brute force or stolen credentials
• 71% of breaches were financially motivated and 25% were motivated by espionage
• 34% of data breaches involved internal actors
• 41% of US-based companies allow employees unrestricted access to sensitive data
• 73% of organizations view strong cybersecurity as a major contributor to business success
• 7 million data records are compromised daily
• 43% of data breaches are cloud-based web applications
• 67% of data breaches resulted from credential theft, human error or social attacks

The fastest, most effective way for companies to put protections in place to guard against a data breach is through secure identity and access management.

Here are three steps to take to secure your data:

1. Rely on Multifactor Authentication to Keep Cybercriminals at Bay

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is a data loss prevention essential. Password security is an ongoing minefield for every company and a top headache for IT. MFA means that even if your staffers’ passwords are stolen or compromised, cybercriminals would still need an additional token or identifying code that’s sent to the staffer by text or app to access your systems, taking the bite out of a bad password.

2. Single Sign-on Adds Safety, Simplicity, and Security

With Single Sign-on (SSO), every employee has their own unique Launchpad that leads to every application, system, and database that they need to do their job, and they only sign in once to access it. This makes it easy for IT staff to control access and change permissions as needed making sure that the right people have access to the right things, and only the right people. SSO also helps guard against insider threats by making it harder for careless staffers to accidentally expose information that they shouldn’t have access to – or malicious insiders to snatch data.

3. Remote Management with Secure Password Vaults Empowers IT Staff to Act Fast to Secure Data in an Emergency – Anytime, Anywhere

Easy remote management empowers IT staffers to add or remove permissions anytime, anywhere. That way, if someone who shouldn’t have access to something accidentally gets into it, it’s a breeze for IT staff to fix that. If an account is compromised (like if a staffer falls for a chat-based phishing scam), cybersecurity staff can quickly and easily disable that account. And with secure centralized password vaults, there’s no time wasted figuring out which IT staffer has the password for that server – it’s in the vault.

How good are your company’s passwords?