Many small businesses are now beginning to realize the power that “big data” can provide for them, and many can use it to increase security as well. However, there is still some disconnect between those needs and reality, even as companies take on the larger responsibility.
Security measures that allow companies of any size to detect data breaches as they happen, or within just a few minutes of the incident, are often the key to properly safeguarding information, but very few companies actually have the capability to do so, according to a new survey of IT professionals from McAfee. Only 35 percent of companies say they can tell a breach has taken place within minutes, while 22 percent say that it would take about a day, and 5 percent indicated it would take a week or so. On average, it takes about 10 hours for such an incident to be spotted.
Despite many potentially overestimating the amount and effectiveness of security controls they have in place, 58 percent of those polled said their companies suffered at least one data breach in the previous 12 months, and fewer than one in four discovered the problem within minutes, the report said. Just 14 percent said they were able to discover the source of the breach in that time period as well.
The reason it’s so important that companies be able to detect breaches as soon as possible is that the people causing them are usually very quick to steal sensitive data and make their retreat, the report said. In nearly half of all breaches studied, the critical information was taken within minutes at the most, but 63 percent of the incidents took weeks or even months to be discovered.
Being able to tap big data for information that can help businesses grow can obviously be very positive for smaller companies which may not have the capability to compile or analyze it themselves, but at the same time, that also puts them in greater danger for exposure. Many small businesses are now targeted for data breaches because they often don’t have the security resources available to them that larger businesses might, and for this reason, small business insurance policies such as tech insurance can be extremely vital to helping cover costs in the event of such an incident.
