What is a data breach?
A data breach is an incident where confidential information is stolen or copied from an organization without its knowledge.
Data breaches can happen to organizations of any size, and the end goal of many data breaches is to simply extort the organization for a ransom to restore access to the data. This is known as ransomware.
How do data breaches happen?
Data breaches are usually caused by some sort of malware, or malicious software that is either unknowingly downloaded or able to bypass weaknesses in an organization's cyber security.
Essentially, data breaches can happen the same way thieves could break into an office. Just the same as unauthorized personnel can pick locks or disguise themselves as a maintenance worker to gain access to a building, a cybercriminal can exploit weak passwords or disguise an email to gain access to a network.
It’s critical to ensure offices are secure to protect the personal belongings of employees, and network security is equally important to protect intangible assets and confidential information. Organizations who don’t take the necessary steps to protect themselves are very much at risk of suffering a data breach.
3 Best practices to prevent data breaches
Maintain active cyber security protocols
It’s important to make sure that your organization has cyber security protocols and uses them. Some data breaches have occurred because certain security features were turned off. While some cyber security services can create inconveniences with communications and day-to-day operations, it is nevertheless important to keep your organization protected. Ideally your organization can find a cyber security partner like Mimecast that can enable the same productivity and ease of operation while also keeping your organization secure.
Train employees
The overwhelming majority of data breaches are caused by human error. As cyber threats are getting more and more sophisticated, it takes a trained eye to discern a phishing attack email from legitimate email. Having security awareness training for employees to detect and respond to ransomware and other potential cyber threats is essential for preventing data breaches
Stay current with cyber threats
It's important to have an understanding of cyber threat trends so that you can discern your organization’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities before cyber criminals attack.
Being able to warn employees about fraudulent email trends may also help reduce the likelihood of a data breach.
Data breach prevention built for advanced threats
Data breach prevention is top of mind for nearly every organization today. Headlines about breaches and data leakage lead the news with alarming regularity, and the list of companies that have fallen prey to malicious attacks grows longer every month.
Failures in data breach prevention against internal and external threats can have big consequences.
Whether it’s the inadvertent or malicious loss of intellectual property or the exposure of sensitive customer information, a data breach can bring on financial losses, legal action, and significantly damage to customer confidence and corporate reputation.
The challenge of data breach prevention is finding a solution that provides resilient security controls without stifling employee productivity. Additionally, a superior data breach prevention solution must provide tamper-proof evidence about data leaks for use in disciplinary actions and legal proceedings.
Mimecast offers a data loss prevention (DLP) solution that combines powerful protection with central management and ease-of-use.
Data breach prevention with Mimecast
Mimecast Content Control and Data Leak Prevention is a cloud-based service that delivers organization-wide data breach prevention through seamless integration with Microsoft Exchange. Guarding against both inadvertent loss and malicious attacks, Mimecast’s service provides centralized management and real-time application of flexible and granular DLP security policies.
To identify potential data leaks, Mimecast’s solution scans all inbound and outbound email to evaluate against content policies established by IT administrators. Using pattern matching, keywords, file hashes and dictionaries, Mimecast scans all HTML, subject lines, headers, body text and attachments in search of potential leaks.
With Mimecast, data breach prevention policies can be managed from a single web-based console, with organization-wide changes applied in real time. Mimecast enables consistent policy enforcement, even during outages of email infrastructure, and educates users about data breach prevention best practices with automatic notification of policy transgressions.
Benefits of Mimecast’s data breach prevention solution
Advantages of Mimecast Content Control and Data Leak Prevention include:
- State-of-the-art protection against accidental and malicious leaks via email.
- Tamper-proof audit trails to support legal and regulatory compliance needs.
- A unified solution for policy enforcement across multiple sites.
- A cloud solution that provides immediate effectiveness with zero capital outlay.
- Centralized management of all email communication policies.
FAQs: Data breach prevention
What are the dangers of a data breach?
There are a number of dangers of a data breach, namely that criminals could have access to confidential information and the process(es) of regaining access to that data tend to be expensive and time-intensive.
Another danger is that an organization could be sued and/or fined for negligence to prevent data breaches. The more steps an organization takes to prevent data breaches, the less severe fines tend to be.
What are the most common types of data breaches?
The most common types of data breaches include:
Stolen information – compromised information may be used to steal an individuals’ identity, gain access to personal or financial accounts, and/or sold on illicit markets.
Ransomware – ransomware usually makes data inaccessible and demands a payment in order to restore access. Some double extortion tactics also threaten to leak or sell data if another ransom is not paid.
Distributed Denial of Service – often deployed by a virus or some type of malware, distributed denial of service attacks make it impossible for employees to perform regular operational functions and locks them out of the system.
How can you prevent a data breach in your company?
The best way to prevent a data breach in your company is to partner with a cybersecurity service provider like Mimecast. We can help automate procedures for detecting and responding to cyber threats while keeping your organization running efficiently.
Mimecast empowers employees to understand how to recognize and respond to sophisticated cyber threats so that they can protect your virtual assets as well as your physical office space.
To learn more about how Mimecast's custom solutions can serve your organization, schedule a demo.
