M1 Impact of security breaches
Breaches of data, no mater how serious, can have catastrophic effects on a business or organisation,
and have both short and extended impacts. As a company who deals with online money transfer, we
will be at a higher risk of breaches, as cyber criminals will target our business to access and gain our
customers money.
In order to protect our company, we
will need to put a lot of time and effort
into the purchasing and installation of
anti-virus, firewall and intrusion
detection systems (hardware), whilst
also spending money on employing a
team of technicians who can constantly
monitor and operate our security
system. They will need to keep all
security systems and softwares up-to-
date, at the same time as being qualified in the latest threat prevention protocols and procedures.
Furthermore, all staff should be trained to comply with legal procedures, such as the Data Protection
Act 2018 (GDPR).
Data protection is a fundamental part to our business and, although it will result in extra costs to the
company, it is integral to pay for these systems, as they will protect our customer’s private
information. These extra costs are considered ‘fixed’ as they don’t change, and are also classified as
‘overhead’ costs. As a company we may never be hacked, but it is far better to be protected, then to
face the consequences, which can take the form of fines, of not protecting the financial information
we possess.
There are a number of impacts that could occur if we were to suffer a security breach, they are:
Operational impact
As an organisation, a breach to the data we hold could cause
changes to the way we operate; both long and short term.
Short term changes could include temporary ‘down-time’ on
our services (people being unable to use our services),
whereas long term changes could include the installation of
new security features, which would make sure a breach
doesn’t happen again.
An example of a security breach having an impact on the
operation of a company is Google and the recent closure of
their social networking site ‘Google +’. Over 500,000 users
had their personal data exposed, but rather than disclosing
the massive security flaw, they kept it in-house to avoid
government attention. When this news came out it had a
major impact on the platform as people stopped using it to
protect their data, resulting in Google ceasing this operation.
Google’s breach broke the principle of confidentiality as
Unit 7: IT Systems Security and Encryption
