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Date posted: 11th August 2015
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” – Andy Grove
Complacence companies are losing the war against information security threats. The need to invest has risen of late with the string of well-publicized cyber attacks. Sony’s massive data breach, the US government email hack and ISIS accessing US social media accounts have all put security investment at the top of mind for CIOs.
Despite that some companies remain conservative on their spend due to the lack of “trackable” return on investment from information security investment. These companies hold back on spend until it’s too late to do anything but spend. This ebb and flow in budgets actually increases the total budget and in turn decreases IT ROI.
What is the ROI?
The average enterprise class company spends $4.5 million per year on information security
The average cost of an enterprise data breach is $5.8 million per event
The average cost of ONE HOUR of downtime is $686,000
Investing $4.5 million to save over $6.0 million? I’ll take that any day said your CFO.
According to SungardAS’s Ron LaPedis
When it comes to information security and disaster recovery spending, there are three flavors of company. The first flavor is not required to adhere to any rules and regulations, for example, those dictated by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance standards. So they don’t. Budgeting is easy, because they don’t spend any money in these areas.
The second flavor of company is required to abide by certain rules and regulations. So they do. Just enough. They’re in compliance, and that’s good, but don’t suggest going above and beyond the minimum, thank you very much.
The third flavor of company insists upon taking an active approach toward information security and disaster recovery, regardless of the headlines and regardless of any rules and regulations that apply to them. They spend a fair chunk of change on these programs in fair weather and in foul.
These third companies proactively invest in information security and disaster recovery to ensure peace of mind. Essentially investing money today to avoid large losses later. At the end of the day your choices are clear pay a little now or pay a lot later.
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*Note: ROI data sourced from PWC and Forbes