Are Data Breaches on the Rise?

The last thing any organization wants to experience is a massive data breach that exposes sensitive company information. Learning how to protect against these breaches involves understanding how common they are and what signs to watch out for. Avoid falling for typical traps that may result in costly mistakes to ensure that your company maintains stable cybersecurity.

Below we’ll dive into whether data breaches are on the rise, what you can do to circumvent this common issue, and more.

What is a Data Breach?

A data breach is the result of cyberattacks that target company servers or networks. During the course of this attack, cybercriminals expose confidential, sensitive, and protected information. The exposure of this personal data is referred to as a data breach. By releasing sensitive data, hackers can demand ransom for the release of this data, sell the data to the highest bidder, or simply secure confidential information.

5 Common Signs of a Data Breach

Learning the common signs of data compromises can help any company better prepare its security to protect against these types of vulnerabilities. Here is what you should keep an eye out for when looking for data breaches:

1. Spam phishing emails requesting immediate sensitive information from employees
2. Malware detected on company servers
3. User accounts are randomly locked and normal passcodes do not work
4. Abnormally slow device and network performance
5. Unusual account activity or a spike in similar types of traffic

All of the above signs may indicate that you have a number of data breaches on your hand resulting from cybersecurity incidents.

Have Data Breaches Become More Common?

The number of individuals impacted by data breaches numbered over 290 million in the last year; however, this value was around 60% lower than data from 2019. While ransomware attacks, phishing schemes, and general cybersecurity concerns are still incredibly high, the reason for the lower value compared to previous years has been attributed to the pandemic.

When workers began to work from home en masse, many companies implemented extra cybersecurity training in an attempt to protect against cyber threats. While this hasn’t been foolproof, it helped reduce cybercrime compared to levels pre-pandemic. Despite this, the overall number of data breaches resulting from malware is still extremely high.

5 Tips to Prevent Data Breaches in Your Organization

Take steps to protect the data within your organization by following a few of the below tips:

1. Update antivirus software to ensure malware will be detected
2. Set up an identity theft resource center within your organization
3. Implement training structured and designed by the IT professionals within your organization
4. Generate a data breach report if there is a cyberattack to ensure all compromised data is accounted for
5. Set automatic backups for company servers to ensure data will not be completely lost

Protect your data today

Protecting against critical infrastructure data loss requires a certain level of cyber hygiene. Keep all your systems up to date to ensure there are no gaps in security. If you use software from companies such as Microsoft or IBM, consider turning on automatic updates to keep up to date. For those who allow remote work, continue training employees on how to recognize the signs of cyberattacks to avoid data loss. Above all, if your business is in Columbus, Cleveland, or Akron, and you wish to understand how to better protect your business from cyberattacks and major data loss, contact our experts today.