What You Need To Know About The FTC and Their Power Over Your Business
Last week, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gained some regulatory power in their fight to hold companies accountable for data breaches due to their own security oversights and negligences. Over the past 3-4 years, the amount of security breaches has begun to skyrocket, affecting large corporations such as Sony Playstation Network, Wyndham Worldwide, Target, Ebay, Yahoo! and Sony Pictures Entertainment, just to name a few. This decision makes it possible for the FTC to investigate and prosecute businesses after a security breach that did not take proper security measures to prevent the attack/breach.
What you need to know: this decision affects businesses of all sizes.
What does this mean for small- to-medium-sized business owners?
Well, to put it simply, small business owners can no longer ignore how they protect confidential data, such as employee or customer information. Business owners will now need to educate themselves on the ever changing IT security threatscape and learn how to keep their business and customers protected from potential data theft. Making sure that businesses are running a secure network has become absolutely vital. Business owners need to take this threat seriously, even more so now that the FTC has the power to punish businesses that do not invest in security measures or if they find out that business did not handle their security protocols appropriately. This decision also includes the punishment of businesses who falsely represent their security measures to their customers and clients.
Security is not something to take lightly as it affects every single business owner. Security breaches happen all the time and, 99% of the time, there is no warning. Businesses need to be prepared for the unexpected so that, in the wake of a security breach or attack, there is a proper Business Continuity plan set in place to handle the aftermath and limit damages as efficiently as possible. The harsh reality is, if a business does not take these preventative measures, the FTC can now punish the company in addition to the monetary and reputation damages that the company will already be facing.
It is also important to understand that not all security breaches are malicious; some can even happen from inside by error of employee. Please see our blog on Cyber Attacks & Small Business Risk and Business Continuity to learn more about what you can do to prevent these types of breaches, including employee training and outlining strict internet security policy within your company.
If you have any questions or if you would like to talk to Delaney Computer Services about working together to create a layered approach for your business’ security, give us a call today at (844) TECHIES!
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