BY JEREMY FIELDS
February 1, 2024
In December 2023, cybercriminals compromised more than 2.2 billion data records worldwide. From January to September 2023. there were 2,116 data compromises in the U.S., beating the all-time high of 1,862 data compromises set in 2021 as recorded by the Identity Theft Resource Center.
The meteoric rise in cybercrime in just the last few years has coincided with an explosion in new data production and consumption. Research suggests that in many enterprises, data production is growing by more than 60% per month, due in part to the fact that organizations can collect information from more sources, more easily than ever.
In fact, some companies report that they draw from 1,000 or more data sources to feed mission-critical applications like business intelligence (BI), analytics systems, and machine learning (ML) platforms. While the availability of more data is a boon to businesses eager to gain competitive advantages in the market, it’s also a significant area of risk that could lead to disaster, if they’re not careful.
Untold volumes of data could contain sensitive files — personally identifiable information (PII), nonpublic personal information, and other regulated data — that may be stored in local files, cloud storage, emails, and other locations completely unknown to security or compliance, leaving them exposed to cybercriminals, as well as accidental data loss by the business.
As a result, business and IT leaders around the world are scrambling for solutions to help them simultaneously improve their ability to discover and protect that data while also allowing them to fully leverage it for insights and strategic business planning.
In response, enterprises and their trusted partners are increasingly adopting Data Risk Assessment (DRA) solutions which allow them to dramatically improve their ability to identify and protect structured or unstructured sensitive data – wherever it lives – while also boosting the strategic value of information they may not have even known existed.
Content and context for superior risk reduction
Powered by Spirion’s Privacy Grade data discovery, Spirion’s DRA provides unrivaled visibility and accuracy around previously hidden sensitive data, helping customers (and their Spirion-approved partners) develop a roadmap for a data-centric journey to a stronger security and data privacy posture
Specifically, Spirion’s DRA reports are crucial for identifying gaps in security controls and business processes that significantly increase the odds of a catastrophic breach or profit-killing penalties for non-compliance with stringent data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
Spirion’s Data Risk Assessment reports evaluate critical system and sensitive data risk, sort data by risk level, and enable enterprises to proactively work to reduce risk exposure. Customers can see at-a-glance important details about exposed sensitive data such as:
- Endpoint Name
- Location Path
- Data Type
- Match Quantity
- Locations Searched
- File Type
By determining the volume and the relative vulnerability of sensitive data across the information environment, teams gain improved insight into how they can employ hardened security and privacy protocols at every level of the organization — from endpoints and applications to cloud, database and file services systems — and where to focus their attention for maximum protection.
Real business implications, real business results
Data privacy and security has never been more important — or more challenging. Data breaches now cost on average more than $4 million per instance, and as attack surfaces continue to grow, and attacks themselves become more sophisticated and numerous, the extent of the damage will continue to increase.
Through a light-touch prescriptive sampling of the information environment, a Spirion DRA can apply intelligent searches for highly sensitive data, including bank account and credit card numbers, driver’s license and birth certificates, passports, email addresses, and other high-value targets for cybercriminals.
Extrapolating data from dark web per-file cost trends, Spirion’s DRA – in conjunction with our trusted partners – can identify as much as $3 million of potential value of data-at-risk previously hidden away in the farthest reaches of an organization’s IT environment. Once this data-at-risk is identified, DRA reporting can be used to deliver guided remediation strategies to ward off financial disaster.
A Spirion data risk assessment is a vital part of any comprehensive data privacy and security strategy. Specifically, Spirion’s DRA can significantly minimize the financial and reputational impact of a potential breach by helping to reduce fines, litigation, and compliance penalties, as well as optimizing resource productivity through robust IT security automation that mitigates tangible data risk after just the first report.
