There’s a lot of talk these days about keeping your data safe. It seems like we hear about a new big data breach every month. If you are interested, you can see every major breach in recent history here. A lot of big names have been hacked, but what are the aftereffects of this on a company? How long does it take for companies to recover? Let’s look at the most recent major breach: Target.
Because Target was responsible for the compromised personal and payment information of about 110 million people, the New York Times says that Target suffered a 46 percent decrease in fourth quarter profits from the previous year (61 million to 20 million). According to CBS, Target’s brand is worth 5.5 billion, which makes it the second most valued retailer behind Wal-Mart. Because of it’s new tainted image, Target is estimated to suffer a billion dollar blow from all of this.
Now, Target is a multi-billion dollar company that many people have used and trusted for a long time and still suffered a lot. Because of all of this though, they will still probably be fine and bounce back eventually, but what if this happened to a smaller company? Most companies would not be able to withstand this kind of loss and still survive. This is why secure data is so important. Had Target detected this problem early enough, they could have saved a lot of money and maintained a lot of respect. But they didn’t, and their reputation has been tarnished for a while. You don’t want this to happen to your company because it could do more than ruin your reputation.
Although this seems pretty terrifying, this information does not need to scare you because there are things that you can do to prepare your company. SmartFile Enterprise Solution offers email notifications and audit logging that will help you detect anything that might be going on in your company. If there is anything irregular happening to your data, you will know about it. If you want to maintain your reputation and money, contact SmartFile to see how to keep your information safe.
Have you had any experience with this or know of a company that has? Let us know what happened in the comments below.