3 Ways Data Breaches are Hard to Detect and Harder to Prevent

December 2, 2024

Unfortunately, cybersecurity is one of the most important topics to consider in today’s business world. A recent survey has shown that the majority of security leaders—approximately 67% of those surveyed—don’t know what caused a cybersecurity incident at their business. This is a shockingly high number that cannot be ignored, so let’s look at why data breaches are so challenging to identify and address.

Breaches Are Not Always Transparent or Easy to Notice

Believe it or not, hackers don’t want to get caught, so it’s natural that their data breaches are often under wraps for quite some time following the incident.

In fact, according to IBM, the average number of days from data breach to identification is 207, and that’s not including the time it takes to uncover the cause. Attacks are not always bombastic in nature, like ransomware, where they want to be discovered. Rather, they stay hidden until they’re uncovered.

Many threats use the remote nature of the Internet of Things to launch attacks without the victim knowing until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Many Businesses Can’t Afford the Time and Capital to Investigate

While it might seem like a simple task, investigating a data breach is far from it.

Most SMBs have limited budgets and have a hard enough time as is with anything related to technology, let alone cybersecurity. They can’t invest the time or resources into uncovering the solution to something that has already happened. Most of the time, they would rather fix the problem quickly rather than prevent it from happening again.

Unfortunately, knowing why and how data breaches occur is the best way to keep them from happening again, and businesses can easily fall into the vicious cycle of breach-fix-breach-fix-repeat.

Some Businesses Don’t have the Resources to Protect Themselves, Period

And then there’s the matter of implementing the right technology in the first place.

Businesses should have tools and systems that can proactively detect threats and eliminate them before they cause too much damage. If businesses forego this, they’re asking for trouble and opening themselves up to attack. A small scratch can lead to a festering wound, so to speak.

It’s much harder to get back in action following a breach if you don’t take steps to mitigate the damage upfront.

First Column IT can help your business stay safe from the myriad threats out there. Call us today at (571) 470-5594 to learn more.

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