No business thinks they are going to suffer a data breach. But unfortunately, in today’s environment, it’s difficult to avoid them without taking proper precautions. Approximately 83% of organizations have experienced more than one data breach. (IBM Security 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report)

These breaches hurt businesses in many ways, above and beyond the immediate cost of remediating the breach. There are the lost productivity costs, lost business on top of that, and lost customer trust. A business could also have extensive legal costs associated with a breach.

According to IBM Security’s report, the cost of a data breach climbed again in 2022. The global cost of one breach is now $4.35 million, up 2.6% from last year. If your business is in the U.S., the cost rises to $9.44 million. In Canada, the average data breach costs companies $5.64 million.

Costs for smaller companies tend to be a little lower, but breaches are often more harmful to SMBs because they don’t have the same resources that larger companies have to offset all those costs. While a large organization might be able to recover from a data breach, small to medium sized businesses must take extra care to avoid potentially devastating data breaches.

It’s estimated that 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of a cybersecurity breach.

Companies don’t need to resign themselves to the impending doom of a data breach. There are some proven tactics they can take to mitigate the costs, and these cybersecurity practices can limit the damage of a cyberattack. With these findings from the IBM Security report, which includes hard facts on the benefits of bolstering your cybersecurity strategy, you can begin to take steps to protect your business.

Cybersecurity Tactics to Reduce the Impact of a Breach

1) Use a Hybrid Cloud Approach

Most organizations use the cloud for data storage and business processes. Researchers found that 45% of all data breaches happen in the cloud. But all cloud strategies are not created equally.

Breaches in the public cloud cost significantly more than those in a hybrid cloud. What is a hybrid cloud? It means that some data and processes are in a public cloud, and some are in a private cloud environment.

What some may find surprising is that using a hybrid cloud approach was also better than a private cloud.

2) Put in Place an Incident Response Plan & Practice It 

You don’t need to be a large enterprise to create an incident response (IR) plan. The IR plan is simply a set of instructions. It's for employees to follow should any number of cybersecurity incidents occur. For example, in the case of ransomware, the first step should be disconnecting the infected device. IR plans improve the speed and effectiveness of a response in the face of a security crisis.

Having a practiced incident response plan reduces the cost of a data breach by an average of $2.66 million per incident. For a small business, any chance to reduce the impact of a data breach is incredibly important.

3) Adopt a Zero Trust Security Approach

Zero trust is a collection of security protocols that work together to fortify a network. An example of a few of these are:

  • Multifactor authentication
  • Application whitelisting
  • Contextual user authentication

Approximately 79% of critical infrastructure organizations haven’t adopted zero trust. Doing so can significantly reduce data breach costs. Organizations that don’t deploy zero trust tactics pay about $1 million more per data breach.

4) Use Tools with Security AI & Automation 

Using the right security tools can make a big difference in the cost incurred during a data breach, and tools that deploy security AI and automation brought the biggest cost savings.

Data breach expense lowered by 65.2% thanks to security AI and automation solutions. These types of solutions include tools like advanced threat protection (ATP). They can also include applications that hunt out threats and automate the response.

How to Get Started Improving Your Cyber Resilience

Many of these ways to lower data breach costs are simply best practices. You can get started by taking them one at a time and rolling out upgrades to your cybersecurity strategy.

Working with a trusted IT provider, put together a roadmap, address the “low-hanging fruit,” then move on to longer-term projects. For  example, “low-hanging fruit” would be putting multifactor authentication in place. It’s low-cost and easy to put in place. It also significantly reduces the risk of a cloud breach.

A longer-term project might be creating an incident response plan. Then, you would set up a schedule to have your team drill on the plan regularly. During those drills, you could work out any kinks.

Need Help Improving Your Security & Reducing Risk?

Any small business can work to improve their cybersecurity by putting these kinds of best practices into place. But why worry that you may be doing them wrong, or wonder about what to do after a data breach occurs? Working with a trusted IT partner takes a lot of the security burden off your shoulders. Fill out the form on our website to schedule a ten-minute discovery call with one of our employees to see how SaviorLabs can work with your business to give you peace of mind so you can do business better.