Every company has experienced data breaches and data loss at least once. While the big players can recover from such losses with lawsuits, for small and medium-sized enterprises such major losses mean bankruptcy. 72% of such companies shut down within 24 months.

However, all instances of data loss cannot be blamed on hackers alone. As many as almost 60% of companies have admitted to not regularly backing up their data, which eventually led to data breaches. Another reason that data breaches happen is because of installing vulnerable software from untrustworthy sources.

One of the reasons that SMEs do not upgrade their software or back up data is because of monetary constraints. 44% of SME owners have admitted that their biggest challenge when it comes to data backups and software upgrades is money. 36% of lost data is customer information and 31% is employee data because of malware (35%), email attacks (21%), and phishing scams (17%).

The effect of data loss is bankruptcy leading to the company shutting down. Data breach also does not happen in a single day. Research has found that 93% of companies that experience data breaches for more than 10 days file for bankruptcy within a year and 50% of that number do so immediately.

These numbers no doubt seem alarming. However, investing sufficiently in data security can help prevent such catastrophes. You can do this by either hiring an in-house team or by outsourcing this task to support service providers. Also, choosing one of these options is necessary. Not investing is not an option.