I recently had the opportunity to do some research on a subject that causes me to lose sleep at night: Data Breach. Now most of you are probably thinking, “Data Breach doesn’t apply to me. I’m on a Mac. Viruses and malware in general are something that the other half has to deal with.”, and I would have to agree. Data Breach, as most of us define it, conjures up scary images of some greasy-haired high school kid, sitting in his parents’ basement surrounded by 15 flat screen monitors with something that looks like “Matrix code” streaming on each of them (anyone seen “Hackers”? No? Maybe “Swordfish”? No? Huh…). That’s not the kind of Data Breach I’m talking about. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute in 2007, malicious “hacking” behavior is only responsible for about 18% of Data Breach. The two main contributors to Data Breach: Data Theft and Data Loss.
How many of you have confidential client information stored on your laptop or employ someone who does? And further, how much of this confidential information is protected inside a secure disk image or in some password-protected way? Now here’s the kicker, what if that laptop was stolen? First, do you have any way of retrieving the lost client data? Second, how would your clients feel knowing that their information is now in untrusted hands? So how do we prevent this type of data theft? Before you go handcuffing your laptops to your wrists, let me suggest a more effective, less awkwardly intrusive way to accomplish the same thing. Stop storing client data on your insecure laptops, flash drives, and mobile devices! Instead, use laptops and other mobile devices to access the client data on a secured server over a secured network. This way, you mitigate the risk of client data loss should your laptop fall into nefarious hands.
How many of you have backup sets or archives of client data? How many of those backups occur daily? Hourly? What would happen to your client data if there was a fire in your building and everything was destroyed? How long would it take you to rebuild the lost client data and how much money will it cost you? Recovering data from a damaged hard drive can cost up to $8,500! The solution to this type of data breach is simple: Offsite data backup with backup sets rotated weekly. This way, if there were a catastrophe, you would be no further than a week away from your most crucial data. In most cases, having an offsite data backup of this sort can literally keep you in business.
I found a couple of articles online (I’ll include links at the end) that talk about the cost of Data Breach, and the numbers were, although not surprising, quite staggering. It is estimated by one of the articles that the average cost of data breach is $200 per client! Now, while I realize that the articles focus on the larger “enterprise” type companies, the numbers still support the fact that data breach of any kind is extremely detrimental to any size company. So how can MacDocs help? MacDocs has the most experienced team of Apple Certified Server Administrators and Technical Coordinators in our Professional Service department. Our services have helped prevent data theft by installing and configuring servers and networks with security protocols that have kept client information safe and out of the hands of thieves (both the physical and digital kinds). We also help prevent data loss by offering weekly offsite backups. These solutions ensure that you are doing everything to prevent data breach and to keep your clients, your clients.
Recent Comments