Why Data Security Must Be Treated as a Core Business Value

- Ted West, BOHH Labs Chairman

What makes a company successful? Ask almost any enterprise today and they will tell you that strong revenue, a loyal base of customers and forward-thinking are the keys to ensuring long-term success. However, in our digitally-driven, cloud and mobile-dispersed business world, security is becoming a top priority for more and more organizations, especially for the customer, operations and transactions data they hold. When companies are hit with a data breach or expose sensitive data to “bad actors”, the ramifications can be huge: loss in customers, reimbursement to customers, legal fines and data recovery fees, or perhaps even something worse – damage to reputation. All of these repercussions of a data breach can greatly impact the success and revenue stream of a business, yet data security is still largely viewed as a role of the CIO, CISOs or whomever is in charge of the company’s security strategy.

Most CIOs acknowledge that cybersecurity is a core expectation of their leadership, yet many believe that companies still view security and risk management as mere “compliance chores” and a “cost of doing business.” Industry analysts report that more companies are increasing spending on security investments. However, if companies are making investment decisions in security simply based on implementing what meets the minimum requirements of securing data, and they are not looking at how these investments directly impact business strategy and the bottom line, they will likely fall short of what is needed. 

Data is an asset

It’s clear data is an asset to businesses and holds a lot of weight to how successful a business can be. It’s no secret that most businesses today are happy to put investments in to analyzing data to increase sales and market shares, but those analytics are not useful if business can’t keep their data protected. Business leaders, starting from the Board of Directors and moving through the C-suite, must insist on their organizations adapting the most effective security measures in their IT platforms and workflows and processes today keep the data they hold secure. Their success depends on it. They have no choice, and they should expect nothing less. While this task is not always easy, there is a great opportunity for those businesses who do place importance on keeping data protected and treating it like a core business value to gain a competitive advantage and strengthen their ability to keep the “bad actors” from compromising their good data, their customers’ trust and loyalty, and their critical brands.

Data security is becoming existential, no longer circumstantial, for many organizations

With the current climate of breaches revealed daily and the number and scope of attacks on the rise, organization leaders must start asking themselves: Is fixing a security breach that exposes millions of client records and brings financial and brand damage merely a “compliance chore”, or is it more than that? Is the investment needed to prevent such a breach from happening again a simple “cost of doing business”, or is it more than that? Is fixing a breach, or guarding against it in the first place, a strategic issue impacting the trust and reputation of the organization and its position to grow and retain a loyal base of customers? We think so.