Why proactive information security strategy should be a priority for organizations?

Grasp this – 52 million Google users, 50 million Facebook users, and every single U.S. military weapon has this one common problem – Cybersecurity. It is predicted that it is impossible to keep information 100% safe. While cybersecurity is a high priority for most organizations, with an increase in their spending, but the total amount is still at around 2% of the entire IT expenditure.

Why Cybersecurity is still not a proactive strategy to the level it should be is something that the senior leadership should seriously consider . There is a gap where senior leaders still lack a grasp of cybersecurity and the effects of the absence of a strong strategy, and the tech teams do not have the budget to keep information and data safe. The trend among organizations around the most critical aspect of information and data protection has been mostly reactive. So why exactly should organizations focus on proactive information security?

Financial Loss in a Reactionary Step

Cyber attacks cause countries more than $1 trillion – more than what natural disasters can cause as per a report from Harvard Business Review . An attack on a computer processing or communications network alone could lead to $50 billion to $120 billion of damage. It could take up to 196 days to identify data breach, and an average cost to a U.S. company can be up to $7.91 million. Are organizations willing to incur such damages when a lot can be saved through preventive measures? With the United States being the number 1 target for cybercrimes , organizations cannot wait for a breach to happen and the earlier preventive actions are taken, the less financial impact it could have on an organization.

Rebuilding Consumer Trust

Once a breach happens, consumer trust gets adversely affected – not just for the organization but the entire industry. The chances of consumers engaging with a brand that has been involved in a breach, getting significantly impacted are high. Close to 78% of respondents in a study said they would stop engaging with a brand online, and 36% respondents said they would stop engaging with the brand completely. Can organizations risk consumer trust when the stakes are so high? With a breach, a brand not only compromises consumer’s personal information which is infringed but also their trust. So why wait for it to happen? Fact is – consumers are far more aware of the potential breaches that could jeopardize their personal data security, making them wary of a brand’s capability of guarding their data – and that is definitely not good news for the brand equity of a company.

Infrastructures are getting more complex

IT Infrastructures in organizations are witnessing phenomenal transformations, with the likes of implementing serverless computing, to AI. This phenomenon will continue to move forward towards cloud services, IoT, and edge services, which means a higher-end technology driven IT infrastructure that is more complex than ever before. While AI and Machine Learning will be transforming enterprises for better, but it would also introduce a possible array of “smart” attacks . Thus, the security of all the information being consumed by this complex network becomes all the more critical. With 80% of enterprises migrating entirely away from on-premises data centers by 2025, the control over information security becomes all the more relevant.

Control on Future Threats

Increase in next-generation technology means extra vigilance required from security professionals to counter-attack next-gen threats. Preventive detection, training, and adopting new ways to automate prevention methods are investments that the leadership team of enterprises needs to act on now. Understanding of future threats, and having control of expected breaches solidifies a company’s commitment to its consumers’ data privacy and security. This has a positive effect on consumer trust and confidence that eventually is a sign of healthy growth of brand equity.
Conversations around information security need to see a thrust on a proactive culture of tackling threats and breaches. While patching vulnerabilities, and fixing leaks would continue to be a critical aspect of fixing the problem, the focus has to additionally gear towards preventive actions, for the larger benefit. We will continue to discuss in details on the above with respect to future technologies, and trends in our upcoming blogs. So stay tuned!

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