February 2014 • Part 1 in a Series of Data Breach Articles by Judi Newman
This is the first part in a multiple part series targeted for small to medium sized businesses. We are including insurance agencies like yours that are definitely included in this category.
We don’t need to look back any further than December 19, 2013 when Target announced that its data had been breached. Since then, the news keeps getting worse. Okay, you say they are big business, what does that have to do with the small to mid sized businesses? Statistic number one, each year for the last six to eight years, 70% of small businesses have had their data breached according to annual studies conducted by the Ponemon Institute, Verizon and Symantec.
The problem is most of these businesses don’t know it happened until or unless an identity theft issue is traced back to their data.
Over the next several months we are going to explore how you can protect your data from a data breach and what the federal and state laws say you must do to protect it and what you must do in the event of a data breach.
Stay tuned while we take you through a process on how you should be taking proactive, strategic steps to protect your customer and employee data — and for developing a plan on how you would respond should something occur that compromises that data that will:
¨ Strengthen the trust that your customers place in you
¨ Set you apart from your competition
¨ Save you money in the near-term
¨ Might even save your business in the event of a significant data loss
It is our goal to give you concrete guidelines and suggestions that will point you towards solutions and resources that are right-sized for business owners like you.
Judi Newman of Phaze II Consulting Inc. Phaze II Consulting Inc. and Bill Larson of Profit Protection Management Consultants, Inc. provide consulting services to independent insurance agencies on a variety of management issues including data privacy and security like, HIPAA/HITECH, FACTA, GLB and can be reached at 239-481-6001 or e-mail: judinewman@aol.com for additional information.