IT Security Breaches

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Recommended: Information security breaches

Business owners will go to amazing lengths to keep their workplace safe while completely overlooking their IT security and their multifunction devices. IT security breaches cost the average company $800,000 in 2009 (Tattrie, 2009). Those figures represent a 97 percent increase from 2008. The $800,000 includes labor lost when a breach freezes systems, cost of repairing the damage caused by the breach, and the cost of replacing the faulty security. That is quite a large sum that is also highly avoidable. Due to escalation in Internet use, the amount of computer security breaches that businesses have experienced in the last year has increased at a rapid rate. Breaches can come from external attacks as well as within the walls of a company. External attacks are serious but the threat created by a company’s employees can be much worse (Robb, 2010). Last year 81 percent of security breaches came from inside the company. Employees can cause deliberate attacks, but more likely employee use can compromise your system without malice and unknowingly. Employees can abuse internet access privileges by downloading pornography, downloading music, and pirating software. Obviously, this is improper use of company time and resources but more importantly, it can expose your company to fines from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and it also can make your computer network more vulnerable to access from outside troublemakers and industry spies. BSA has collected more than $70 million in penalties from companies where employees violated piracy laws.

Some of the more common security problems that affect small business computers include viruses and hackers. Viruses can rewrite coding to make your software programs unusable, as well as scramble and...

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...inistrator level. Updating your current system will save you money in the end.

Works Cited

BSA. (n.d.). Business Software Alliance. Retrieved from Business Software Alliance: www.bsa.org

Dowling, P. J. (1998). Web Advertising and Marketing. Course Technology, Inc.

Emory, V. (1997). How To Grow Your Business on the Internet. Coriolis Group.

Robb, D. (2010, March 28). Internal Security Breaches More Damaging. Retrieved from Datamation: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/1405031

Security Attacks. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Computer Technology Documentation Project: http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/security/recommendations/secattacks.html

Tattrie, J. (2009, October 27). Security Breaches Cost Companies Thousands. Retrieved from Metronews.ca: http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/work/article/351179--security-breaches-cost-companies-thousands

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