These days, small businesses are at significant risk for data breaches because hackers have in the last year or more turned their attentions to attacking those targets with less in the way of potential security barriers. That, in turn, can increase problems for these companies specifically for a number of reasons, and particularly those that do a lot of business with overseas customers or clients.
The problem for many such small businesses, in particular, is that if they’re handling data for international clients they may be beholden to the rules and regulations of the countries in which those entities are based, and that can create a logistical nightmare if the company suffers a data breach, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The data breach laws in the U.S. alone can vary widely and disparately from one state to another, but when foreign governments’ regulatory controls get involved, it can be a major issue. This may be particularly true going forward because of the increased focus, on a global level, on data security.
While many of these will mainly affect financial institutions today, the future could see a shift toward greater emphasis for all industries, the report said. How that could affect small businesses, based on customer or client expectations of data security, will likely become a very important area for owners to focus on going forward.
“Sweden, Japan, Singapore, the U.S., you are starting to see the need for all sorts of privacy performance, translating in the last few years from being a best practice to an obligation,” Olivier Piou, chief executive of data-security firm Gemalto, told the newspaper. “In the next few years it will be an obligation, whether by law or reputation. Banks still hesitate to communicate a lot on their penetration and their events. Why? I think we are past the question of ‘should we do something,’ it’s ‘let’s do something.'”
Of course, companies that are developing data breach-related contingency plans may also want to start thinking about the small business insurance options that could help them to keep their costs – which can be substantial – down in the event of such an incident. This type of tech insurance could go a long way to aiding businesses in staying afloat while trying to remediate the risks associated with suffering a breach.
