I have a strong lock on my front door. The Art Museum locks their doors and has sophisticated security to protect the paintings and other works of art. In both cases, we are protecting our treasures and providing safety. But, the daily headlines tell us that businesses are doing an inadequate job protecting their treasure – the data and information that is the lifeblood of the firm.

What is the cost to business of lax data security? A study by PGP/Ponemon reported in the Insurance Journal found the following:

• Lost business averages $4.59 million or $139 per record – 69% of data breach costs
• Notification costs are, at a minimum $1-$2 per individual and credit monitoring, if required, costs an additional $10 – $20 per person per year
• Average costs for data breaches per incident are $202 per compromised record, totalling $6.65 million.

And, these costs are going up and more businesses are facing the possibility of being slapped with them. The federal government is implementing the Red Flags Rules which require businesses to plan and respond to data breaches, including personal information of individuals. They’ve also committed to pursuing HIPAA privacy violations as well as adding new security rules under the Hi Tech Act. Let’s not forget that as many as 44 states have their own requirements for businesses when breaches occur.

There are solutions that won’t break the bank. Business owners should investigate and consider insurance for data breaches. But, unless the business has taken steps to mitigate the likelihood of a breach, insurance might be costly or unavailable.

What’s the best solution? SSC’s  SHAPE Card. Our Secure Health And Privacy Environment (SHAPE) using our patent-pending biometric match-on-card process provides the ultimate in “front-end” security and privacy with the greatest ease of use. And, since our solutions wrap around existing systems, the cost of implementation is low. So, you might say we lock the door and keep the treasure intact, too!

SHAPE – Secure information at the tip of your finger.