A NordLayer expert explains data breaches: reasons, costs, and preventive measures

LONDON, Oct. 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- After Optus suffered a major breach of 10M customers' sensitive information, followed by an incident at rival, Telstra, which saw exposure of 30,000 workers' data, Australia is changing its data protection legislation.

No company is immune to data breaches
"Huge corporations can afford significant budgets for IT security," says Martynas Paškauskas, head of development at NordLayer. "And still, they fall victim to cyberattacks that cost them millions. The smaller the company is and the less it company can afford to invest in a protection system, the easier it is for a cybercriminal to get ahold of a company's data."

How data breaches happen
Statistically, every second of 2022, two internet users have their data leaked. "Social engineering is a common technique," explains Paškauskas. "Once a hacker persuades an employee to grant access to internal systems, little can be done to stop them. Often it's enough for an employee to click on a link or attached document. The technique is based on exploiting normal human weaknesses, and we should not underrate how persuasive modern cybercriminals have become."

"Other things that criminals can exploit include vulnerabilities in software, exposure of internal network, or weak passwords. Remote work and lack of cybersecurity supervision are the important contributing factors here."

What are the costs?
"Millions" in costs is not an exaggeration. The total global cost of one data breach currently averages $4.35M.

"This price includes identifying a breach and its scale, containing it, ensuring further protection of the victim's data, practically renewing all infrastructure," Paškauskas says. "In times of economic hardship, many companies will be tempted to cut costs on preventive cybersecurity measures, but they shouldn't forget that one breach might cost them significantly more, and this price will only increase."

How to prevent a data breach
"The most advanced solutions for business protection use the zero-trust model, meaning literally: never trust anyone, and always verify who you let inside," says Paškauskas. "It might at first sound like a lot of work for businesses, but modern automated systems are capable of guarding your business' data 24/7 without involving an irrational number of resources or relying on the human factor. Adopting such a system and regular employee security training will minimize the possibility of a breach happening to your company."

NordLayer is an adaptive network-access security solution for businesses. More information: www.nordlayer.com