Is your Company at risk of losing data?

Data

According to the IT Trust Curve survey report by EMC Corporation, security breaches cost organisations several hundred thousand dollars more on average than other commonly occurring IT incidents.

While respondents reported an average financial loss of $860,273 due to breaches, incidents such as data loss and downtime also impacted organisations heavily – costing businesses $585,892 and $497,037, respectively, over the course of a year.

Companies may face the inevitable task of recreating lost data from scratch after a loss occurs. Even worse is the damage to one’s reputation, especially since most consumers said they would entirely stop dealing with an organisation in the event of a security breach.

Causes of Data Loss

A number of issues can cause an organisation to lose data.

Hardware Failures

Power failures such as brown outs, power surges and power spikes play serious havoc on electronics. Computer hard drives are particularly prone to failures as a result of unstable power supply. With the country experiencing “Dumsor”, the risk is even greater as a result of the unpredictability of the load shedding exercise.

Human Error

A company's greatest asset is its employees and they are the weakest link in any data security strategy. Accidental deletion of files, dropping laptops and data storage devices are some of the ways employees lose company data. Although a company may have malicious users who might delete files as a vendetta against the company, most data loss situations are accidental in nature.

Software Corruption

Software errors or buggy software can lead to data corruption, also related to this is improper shutdown of computers leading to data corruption.

Errors in software programming, which create a lot of bugs in the software, lead to a lot of data inconsistency and data corruption. User related data corruption due to inadequate understanding of the use of the software is also another major cause of data loss. Additionally, theft of storage mediums, computer malware/ computer hackers (Virus, Worms, etc), accidents/natural disasters such as fires, lightening, floods, earthquakes, etc can cause data loss.

How insulated are you against such incidents and how can you prevent the loss of data?

The first step is to educate employees on the need to protect data. Employees are more exposed to the organisation's data than any group of people, it is therefore very important to let them understand the cost implications to the company in the case of data loss.

Sensitizing employees on the various means by which data can be lost will go a long way to help the company protect its data.  Inform your employees and other insiders about your company’s security policies. Stress the personal and business consequences of not protecting their mobile devices, systems, storage devices, and the confidential data these contain from loss or theft.

The best ways to prevent data loss is by always backing up your data to a secondary source. This could be a flash drive, external hard drive, a networked drive, or to online backup services. If you decide to use a flash drive or external hard drive, make sure it is in a secured location when not in use.

Following these recommendations will ensure that even in the event that disaster strikes, the data is not irrecoverable but that the business can recover in no time without an adverse effect on the company.

- Ebenezer Essel Barnes