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The True Cost of Not Adhering to Security by Design Best-Practices: A $4.2 Million Dollar Mistake

Recently, we hosted a webinar titled Implementing Security Management Best Practices. In this webinar, we invited the participants to guesstimate the average cost of a data security breach. Unsurprisingly, their answers fell far short of the mark; roughly only 1 out of 5 guessed correctly. 

According to research conducted by Atlas VPN in 2021,(1) $4.2 million is the average cost of a security breach across the world. In the US, the estimated cost is higher at $9M. In our webinar, most attendees significantly underestimated the cost at roughly half of the actual amount.

We followed up with another question asking our audience about how much of today’s IoT communications are insecure. Only 32% of the attendees correctly identified 76% of today’s IoT traffic is insecure. This is based on a recent report published by Zscaler.(2)

Reliable businesses certainly don’t set out to overlook security, but when competing priorities such as project costs, non-security related product features, and project deadlines overshadow data security, companies assume more financial risk than intended. 

Network Intelligence is Key

With a growing attack surface of IoT devices, network intelligence helps to connect the dots between detecting vulnerabilities and actively securing your deployment. For instance, anomaly and threat detection can be automated with the application of machine learning. This helps to speed up the response time to potential breaches. 

Moreover, IoT security requires a different mindset and tools than IT security due to the scale of deployment, not to mention a long list of other factors already covered by our Aeris CTO in an earlier webinar. Having an intuitive and yet powerful user interface that can provide visibility into the security health of devices, applications, and the entire network is the key to success.

IoT security needs to be tightly coupled with a company’s current security system. Integrated security systems are better able to detect and react to threats than bolt-on solutions.

Aeris approach: Network intelligence enhances network visibility and security 

When it comes to IoT security, having data alone is not sufficient. You need to have strong network intelligence to prevent, detect, and respond to security threats across your IoT deployment.  This is achieved primarily by the application of machine learning, which synthesizes and automates the processing of vast amounts of data about the IoT devices, the applications they are running, and the underlying cellular network. Only by doing so will you be able to gain full visibility into the security health of your IoT deployment. With Aeris, you will have access to an easy-to-understand dashboard, actionable alerts, and useful key performance indicators such as the indicator of compromises (IOCs) and security risk score. Together they help you to not only achieve a greater level of visibility about any anomalies and potential security threats, they enable you to proactively prevent, detect, and respond to those threats and anomalies.

Whether you are building a new deployment or looking for a solution to shore up IoT vulnerabilities on an existing deployment, Aeris offers flexible and customizable solutions that can grow and adjust as your IoT deployment scales. With service in 190 countries and over 25 years’ experience in the field, Aeris has the experience and know-how needed to help you protect your data.

Contact us today for a demonstration of the latest security features from Aeris.

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