Biding Your Security Risks The Hard Costs Of Bad Service
By Rom Hendler, Trustifi
Gartner claims that the global security market will eclipse $54 billion U.S. in 2021, representing a huge opportunity. And for good reason: Email threats alone rose 64 % in 2020, according to reports. Businesses are facing increased risks as they continue to adjust to the new hybrid office environments. Many home-based networks are being leveraged as workplace locations, yet these systems don’t always have the same level of cyber protection as their office-based counterparts. All this creates new challenges for companies as they work to build comprehensive, layered email security environments to safeguard their all-important company data.
Yet some security providers have re-vamped their service policies, demanding that existing customers pay increased costs to support crucial services like data loss prevention. Users who don’t opt for the upgraded packages sometimes risk going without such support altogether. These shifts in service commitments are often relative to mergers or leadership changes. Business customers should be wary of such scenarios since there isn’t much gray area when it comes to data security. Sub-par protection is not much different, risk-wise, than having no protection at all. Compromised security support is not just inadvisable, it’s also unnecessary since there are various best-in-class providers of cybersecurity in the marketplace that pride themselves on consistent business policies and prioritized service.
Inferior support for cybersecurity software solutions creates a plethora of wide-ranging ramifications. These include impact on customer satisfaction, operations management, customer trust—and in turn, a company’s bottom line.
Eroding Trust In Your Brand
Findings show that organizations were impacted by poor cybersecurity in far greater ways than the obvious problems of data loss, including the more figurative compromise of the customer’s trust in their brand. The deterioration of customer trust is more severe when breaches extend to higher executives, such as directors, C-levels, or board members. And in fact, research from the digital security firm Gemalto determined that 70% of customers would stop doing business with a company after a data breach. This sobering statistic shows that companies likely won’t get a second chance from customers if they fall victim to a cyberattack, especially if their leadership is involved.
The Broad-Based Effects Of Poor Security
In addition to denigrating customer trust, improper cybersecurity creates problems for areas like supply chain, logistics, and inventory management. For instance, inventory management systems that utilize barcode-based software go a long way to improve physical security in warehouse settings, reducing human error and facilitating the management of tens of thousands of products. Such systems are exponentially more productive than the manual inventory management methods of the past. Yet having such extensive data on an electronic platform makes it vulnerable to compromise—especially if this information is then communicated throughout the company via email.
According to eCommerce provider BigCommerce, it’s common for hackers to leverage stolen data to disrupt business operations. Email platforms often serve as a point of entry for these malicious actors, who then infiltrate the rest of the network over time. Hackers have been known to shut down websites or generate misinformation about companies, using ill-gotten data for extortion purposes. They’ve also engaged in industrial espionage, selling proprietary business plans, market forecasts, and analyses to an organization’s competitors, or the highest bidder. Such practices interrupt business in ways that can reduce normal customer service efforts, impacting customer engagement and satisfaction.
All told, poor handling of cybersecurity and its related support is not only bad business, but it could also be the reckoning of a business, impacting everything from an organization’s financial standing to its brand integrity and public image, and even its basic ability to maintain an online presence. Companies should seriously consider the full range of potential consequences when implementing a comprehensive, layered approach to cybersecurity. Consolidation in the market may cause internal disruption for the providers involved, but businesses shouldn’t allow that disruption to be passed along to them in the form of price hikes or renegotiated service offerings that might jeopardize the effectiveness of their solutions.
An effective, reliable cybersecurity provider must ensure that their clientele has the right tools to guard against malicious intent. But that’s not where the provider’s commitment should end. Those tools must be supported by ongoing, best-of-breed service to make sure they remain up-to-date and fully operative over the long term.
About The Author
Rom Hendler is CEO of Trustifi a cybersecurity firm featuring email encryption solutions delivered on a software as a service platform. Trustifi leads the market with the easiest to use and deploy email security products providing both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor. Its unique, cloud-based storage model is helping the channel rethink its approach to cybersecurity. www.trustifi.com