A brand image or to that extent, a brand equity is made up of company assets that enhance the product value. Thus brand equity is rightfully defined as when assets far outweigh its liabilities, brand equity can be used to boost customer loyalty, deepen customer relationships, and optimize pricing.

Thus it can be said at the onset that brand image takes a beating when potential cyber attacks proliferates the organization compromising all organizational data in its wake. Though it has been observed that to what distance the cyber crimes can infiltrate an organization, few companies have held any claim to their data security being impregnable thus earning customer loyalty in the offing. Thus building customer trust by leveraging strong cyber security principles and sharing it is emphasized way of moving downstream and way ahead of the competition.

Today the world is witnessing a tectonic shift from traditional means of doing business to a brave new world of digital transactions. Payments are initiated and completed on smartphones, social media has revolutionized the marketplace
and small devices can track your location. Though the youth have completely embraced the digital landscape, there is the ubiquitous enemy, cyber crime, lurking somewhere at the back of the mind. Data breaches are no longer a question of ifs and buts, but have been accepted as part of the backdrop.

As in real life, the organizations need to earn the trust of peer companies that the data and transactions is safe with them. Trust should not be broken otherwise it leads to impaired relationships.

A data breach involves unauthorized access to sensitive and confidential data that results in breach of trust attacking the confidentiality and privacy of affected data. In other words, data breach is access to confidential information by an unauthorized party.

3 Types of security incidents are present

• An unauthorized infringement of rules to access systems dishonestly
• A compromise whereby an attacker manipulates data to gain entry unlawfully.
• A breach from the company’s systems or applications.

With growing number of cyberattacks and their finesse, the data breaches have become increasingly difficult to manage. Many companies find it difficult to contain the data breach, once it occurs. A breach can affect consumers from far and wide across different brands with myriad implications. An example of a data breach is YAHOO with approximately 500 million accounts being stolen as admitted by Yahoo. The only advice that YAHOO gave was to change the passwords and security questions and keep a lookout for suspicious lurking activities.

Thus the lesson here obtained from the YAHOO debacle is to maintain company internet protocols, customer and proprietary company information (employee data and financial data) that is of prime importance for most firms. It has been seen that it is not only the data breaches that have displayed a bad picture to the customers in their view of custodians of data but their response and actions that the organization takes after the crisis is over lends to the credibility of the organization.

For more information, visit www.dataresilience.com.au or drop us a note at [email protected]