Living in a digital era comes at a cost. Even with the increase in security technology, data breaches are such a common aspect of society that businesses must readily take action to protect themselves. Unfortunately, small companies often forgo the necessary requirements of data protection and employee training to lower operating costs without realizing how the hidden costs of a data breach can financially destabilize their business. Today, we are here to share with you those hidden costs for small businesses and how you, as a business owner or manager, can protect yourself from data destruction, including media destruction and hard drive destruction.
The Scary Stats Behind Data Breaches for Small Businesses
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2024 report, 26% of small businesses experienced a data breach this year.
So, what does that translate to for costs?
The cost of data breaches worldwide is higher than ever, with Shred It reporting an average cost of $9.4 million. Why so high? It is because a data breach cost is more than just a swiping of data, it’s the total cost encompassing the entirety of the problem.
When a data breach occurs, small businesses have to pay for the incident response, repair the breached systems, notify customers of the breach, and respond to subsequent reactions. In addition, there is the potential to have to pay compliance or legal fees, especially if the business is involved with highly regulated industries such as medical or finance.
That doesn’t even include the impact it would potentially have on business revenue. Following a data breach, there is a high chance your business will suffer from downtime and reputation loss. For example, 81% of consumers said they would stop engaging with a brand online after a data breach. Not only could you lose the trust of your customers, but you may see a loss of morale among business partners, employees, and investors.
As you can see, the cost can skyrocket quickly! For many small businesses, a single data breach could be enough to put them out of business.
How Does a Data Breach Happen?
It only takes a small mistake for data to slip through the cracks and become available for stealing. In 2023, a survey of small businesses reported that 50% of data breaches are caused by employee error. It could be as easy as forgetting to properly dispose of a client’s credit card number, succumbing to a phishing attack, or not correctly destroying a piece of media before throwing it away.
How to Protect My Business from Data Breaches
Taking the necessary steps to protect your business from data breaches is worth the effort and cost. While it may seem like a heavy investment upfront, the protection it provides your business far outweighs the cost.
To protect your business, we recommend investing in cybersecurity, backing up your data consistently, training your employees in data-protecting techniques, having a reliable security expert on hand, and taking the proper measures to ensure media destruction.
What Does Media Destruction Entail?
Media destruction is the fastest and most secure method to destroy a wide range of media products. It’s not just deleting data off a device but full physical device destruction. Each piece of media is set into destruction equipment that destroys the device by bending, breaking, and mangling it and its internal components beyond recognition. That way, there is no way for a clever hacker to make off with “deleted” data.
Media Destruction & Data Destruction with CI Information Management
At CI Information Management, we offer our clients secure shredding and media destruction services, from extensive bins full of paper to an office with hard drives.
When explicitly considering media, we provide all types of media destruction, from hard drive destruction to optical media (like CDs and CD-ROMs, DVDs and DVD-ROMs, and Blu-ray), zip disks (100 MB, 250 MB, and larger), magnetic backup tapes (any kind of DLT, mini cartridges, and more), and even floppy Disks (3.5-inch disks, 5.25-inch disks, and others).
With us, you never have to worry about the destruction of your data. Our trained, background-checked, bonded, and insured employees follow a strict chain of custody during the entire destruction process, which meets the compliance standards used by state and federal privacy laws such as HIPAA, FACTA, SOX, and GLB.
Please don’t wait until it’s too late to save your data! Take advantage of secure shredding and media destruction as a part of your standard business operating procedures. Give us a call or request a free quote today!
