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.

‍

Different Scams Impact Different Audiences, Which Means You Need to Prepare for All of Them

Back during the holiday season, the Federal Trade Commission shared some data that showed that members of Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z are all more likely to fall for online shopping scams than those over the age of 60…and not by a little, either. Those under that age are apparently 86 percent more likely to fall for these scams.

January 24, 2023

The Right Collaboration Tech Makes for a More Efficient Business

There is so much about business that has changed over the last decade. What are the biggest gauges that we've seen is the inflation of cost affecting businesses and the need to scale back without affecting their workforce too dramatically. This has led to a culture of collaboration that has popped up over the last few years. Let's look at three ways that any business is (or should be) using collaboration nowadays.

January 23, 2023

Who is Handling These Critical IT Tasks In Your Organization?

Your business might have a full-time IT person, but it also might not have one, and in cases like this, you might find yourself waiting to call your go-to person until you are experiencing a full-blown problem. The reality is that your internal, non-IT staff should not be responsible for the job of your IT department, and if you are relying on someone externally to handle your technology help, then you’ll want to make sure they tick all of the following boxes.

Welcome to the First Column IT Tech Blog