The Hidden Cost of Data Protection

Companies today realize the threats and consequences of data loss, and by now most have some sort of data protection in place. But businesses that rushed into data protection for fear of losing precious information may have been too quick to throw together a patchwork quilt of security software that is now proving costly.
In the rush to get data protection in place, many companies frantically stitched together technology from various vendors and overlooked issues such as software integration and policy. The fear of leaving themselves vulnerable to data loss resulted in a lack of planning and processes for technology implementations, and now they are left to deal with the consequences.
Now that technologies are in place, companies are faced with ongoing auditing and the need to prove to auditors that 1) they did enough to protect themselves, and 2) that they chose the right paths of protection. In fact, despite implementing a slew of security solutions, companies are finding that they may not have done much to actually lower their risk, because they didn’t actually understand what data needed to be protected in the first place. Furthermore, the mishmash of security solutions is impossible to manage and has greatly increased costs.
To make matters worse, those who haven’t yet implemented data protection technology are seeing the spike in other organizations’ data protection costs and are beginning to (continue reading...)