A “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” approach to data protection no longer stands

Published on March 28, 2018 in Cyber Security

With the latest news around Facebook revealing just how enormous the reputational cost of suffering a data breach can be, UK organisations cannot afford not to take data protection and cyber security seriously. It has to be a priority.

Our latest report revealing that a fifth of the UK public believe cybercrime and hacking are the biggest challenges facing the UK today, the nation has an obligation to make data protection as much of a priority as the public, who are regularly asked to hand over financial and other personal data.

But with less than 10 percent of consumers believing businesses are doing enough to ensure their data is protected, we’ve seen a significant decline in consumer trust in organisations to properly protect their personal data.

If organisations are to remain ahead of their competitors and stay trusted in the eyes of the consumer – companies like Facebook need to take responsibility and ensure they are robust in their security.

Adopting a proactive approach

Data breaches make headlines on a daily basis. As data becomes a new currency in itself, any organisation that holds sensitive information is a potential target.

Consumers are almost powerless to stop these breaches happening and the reputational damages could be damning. Yet, the fines and consequences are still not making a big enough impact on corporates as many simply accept the potential risk rather than addressing it.

We believe adopting a proactive approach is the only way to safeguard organisations and individuals – so we provide a broad portfolio of intelligent security offerings to enable organisations to prepare for and respond to all kinds of security issues.

Take Fujitsu’s Vulnerability Management service as a prime example of this.

Almost daily, we hear of vulnerabilities being announced which enable attackers, malware and rogue operators to compromise systems and services within the enterprise.

Many of these vulnerabilities allow access, which can go undetected by traditional security controls and enterprise management tools.

Effective vulnerability management allows an organisation to proactively gain and then maintain intelligence of the state of the assets within the enterprise.

A safer UK

Businesses need to take a more proactive role if we are to strengthen the UK’s cybersecurity capabilities.

With the number of threats continuing to increase exponentially, customer trust has never been so valuable or hard to come by – and as such it has never been more important to be open and honest about security.

It is paramount that we do not fall into complacency or overlook security. It is especially important that we do not decide it’s simply “too big to fix”.

After all, cybercrime is not a probability: it is an inevitability. The determining factor is how we prepare for it.

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