Millions lost as TalkTalk, Sage count the cost of data breaches

Talk Talk suffer form data protection breach

Recent headline-grabbing data breaches have highlighted the profound cost impacts awaiting businesses that fail to ensure adequate security of personal data.

 

Accounting software company Sage saw its share price open 4% lower in the immediate aftermath of revelations that almost 300 UK company records were compromised, including employee bank details and salary information.

 

It was disclosed that the breach, which affected Sage UK Payroll Services, was conducted by an employee.

 

Earlier this year, telecoms operator TalkTalk announced that the cyber-attacks it suffered in October 2015 had, it transpired, been much less directly damaging than originally feared, with the breach only affecting 4% of its customers, none of whom suffered any financial loss as a consequence.

 

However, TalkTalk management has now revealed total losses of more than £60m to the business, following three separate breaches, as a result of reputational damage, plus widespread customer dissatisfaction with the way the company handled the incident.

 

In addition, the company reported a net loss of more than 100,000 customers since the affair.

 

Companies are under increasing commercial pressure to ensure adequate systems are in place to guarantee the security of personal data, as the forthcoming EU GDPR approaches in May 2018.

 

Costs incurred through reputational damage, as seen in the cases of TalkTalk and Sage, directly impact upon areas such as customer retention and shareholder value.

 

On top of this, companies failing to comply with GDPR also face fines of up to €20m or 4% of turnover, whichever is the higher.

 

Sources : https://www.ft.com/content/15ea6930-8b07-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731; http://www.cityam.com/247532/business-software-firm-sage-warns-customers-over-data

the challenge - wizuda case studies

The board of a multinational medical device organisation required a secure, cloud-based solution which facilitated virtual board member collaboration on key documents in preparation for monthly board meetings.

The documentation was regularly of a highly commercially sensitive nature, largely relating to ongoing clinical trials, and as such demanded a secure and encrypted platform which could be implemented without the engagement of internal IT resources.

Key challenges that need to be  considered:

  • Geographically dispersed stakeholders
  • Highly commercially sensitive documentation
  • No internal IT involvement
  • Multiple stakeholders required to collaborate on
    single documents
the solution- wizuda case studies

Wizuda MFT gave them a centralised view of all their file transfer activities and a network overview of the data flows. IT now had instantly available reporting and could provide geographic maps and network overviews to senior management of all file transfer activities in the organisation. These could also be categorised in ways that made sense for the business from a priorities perspective. Wizuda’s unique ‘Health Check’ dashboard with automated monitoring and alerts, allowed them to manage all transfer operations proactively and ensured they were always on top of any issues.

From a GDPR compliance perspective, transfers could be linked to Data Protection Impact Assessments were required and data could be anonymised as part of the transfer process. Wizuda MFT enabled them to apply the latest security protocols for file transfers and encrypt data at rest and in transit. Passing cyber-security and GDPR compliance audits became a lot easier.

About Wizuda

Developing IT Solutions to Make Businesses Better

At Wizuda we focus on developing IT solutions which help businesses grow and empower people to collaborate and stay connected securely and compliantly. Specialists in secure data transfer since 2001, all development and support operations are carried out from our two Irish 

offices located in Dublin (Wizuda Headquarters) and Limerick. We pride ourselves in developing software solutions that allow organisations to take back control of their file transfer and data sharing operations, enabling them to operate efficiently, securely and compliantly

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