Think IT security is to costly think again

In recent times many companies feel that the cost of implementing IT security or having it checked is just not a cost effective use of company money. " After all we buy our virus checker and we use the same software as the big corporate down the road" Well think again, not only is a breach likely to cost you serious damage to your reputation, under the new General Data Protection Regulation you could be fined up to four percent of your annual turnover. So for example in the case of the recent Tesco issue this could have led to a fine of £1.9bn, no small amount, oh and of course they are "the big corporate down the road." Although the text is not 100% clear in GDPR it is thought that whole group would be subject to the fine, not just the sub division, so in the case of Tesco this is why the fine would appear to be so large. It is also worth pointing out that the cost would not stop here as once fined, the company would be open to class-action law suits. With less than 24 months until this law comes in it may well be time to reconsider the attitude to spending on security, after all with fines based on turnover you may well find you don't have a business after one single breach. It may well become more difficult to get liability insurance to cover this eventuality if you can not demonstrate you are secure.

posted on Tuesday, November 15, 2016