“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and a few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it.”
— Stéphane Nappo, Global Chief Information Security Executive
True. It’s difficult to exactly measure how the reputation of a business is affected following a data breach.
Regardless, publicly disclosed cyber incidents that compromised users’ information have affected both the value of stocks and narratives about the targeted business.
For instance, after the latest T-Mobile data breach that was detected on January 5 and enabled the hacker to obtain the information of 37 million users, customers took notice of the pattern. This incident marked the fifth time that T-Mobile has been hacked since 2018.
Data that has been compromised includes customer birthdays, billing addresses, names, account numbers, and the number of lines per account.
Shares of the T-Mobile corporation plunged by 1% a couple of days after the company released the statement.
Besides reputation, such cyber incidents damage the finances of businesses by putting regular work at a halt and bringing high costs in the remediation stage following the incident.
So, how do you prevent a data breach from happening in the first place?
Here, we focus on the latest information protection tool.
What role does a data fabric have in reducing the chance of a damaging data breach? Let’s find out.
What Is A Data Fabric?
A data fabric is a data-centric cybersecurity solution, a unified alternative to traditional platforms for cyber protection.
That is, the tool guards the most valuable asset of a company by identifying, cataloging, evaluating, assessing, and analyzing possible threats that might endanger the records.
The core capabilities of this data security tool are:
- Data compliance — now streamlined and automated based on the latest policies that a company has to adhere to and data risk controls
- Expedite audits using automated components that allow rapid research and investigation of large volumes of data
- Assessment of the risk of internal threats, such as malicious insiders, by increasing the visibility of who is accessing the systems and the data
The tool is automated and keeps security teams in the loop by repeating the discovery and analysis of the attack surface at all times.
Even more, it’s integrated with security solutions that guard companies against the most common hacking threats. Some of them are Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Web Application Firewall (WAF), and Splunk.
As a result, any malicious activity that could comprise information is uncovered early. This gives the security teams enough time to mitigate the issue and secure sensitive records within the network of an organization.
Since businesses nowadays have built complex infrastructures within which the data is shared, created, and migrated— the data security fabric also has to be suitable for modern hybrid and ever-scaling architectures.
The same solution and its exact feature and capabilities differ from one vendor to another. It’s best to find one that integrates with other security tools and can keep up with your growing company.
Early Discovery of Intruders in the Infrastructure
With other security tools, it might take up to three weeks for the hacking activity that compromises data to be discovered.
Considering that it gives the threat actor more time to extract and alter the data, the cost of the attack increases every minute it takes the security teams to discover illicit access or activity.
Namely, the global cost of cyberattacks has been estimated at $8.4 trillion. A mind-numbing figure.
The data security fabric is designed to accelerate the time it takes to uncover malicious activity in the infrastructure.
This also cuts down costs that companies would otherwise have to spend on remediation — the period during which the finances of the business suffer the most due to the attack.
Depending on which data has been compromised, how long it took the security teams to uncover the incidents, and what kind of hacking method has been used will determine the financial repercussions of the incident.
For instance, financial losses might accumulate if the infrastructure has been locked in ransomware and the company has to rebuild it, sensitive user data has been leaked, and that led to a class action, or more cyber professionals are needed to fix and strengthen security.
Protection of Data Is the Priority
In a nutshell, data breaches are not going anywhere anytime soon. A lucrative commodity, cybercriminals have learned that businesses keep more user and corporate information than ever – most of which can be leveraged in the wrong hands.
Therefore, having security solutions that prioritize the protection of information is essential because it prevents major financial losses following a breach that tarnishes the public image and reputation of affected companies.
The main advantage of a security tool such as data security fabric is that it puts data first.
It takes into consideration the information in its approach to security, and with that, it stops the hacking activity that compromises sensitive records and could lead to a damaging data breach.
