Is your telecoms supplier protecting your business from the risk of a security breach?

According to a recent report on data security breaches, every day 1,358,671 data records are lost or stolen worldwide. In the past few years there has been some high profile and detrimental security attacks on companies in the telecommunications industry, including Vodafone and Korean Telecom; and this year it was reported that 4,000,000 records were breached as part of security attack resulting in identity theft Talk Talk customers.

According to the Breach Level Index records breached in the first half of 2015 was a staggering 245,919,393 across 888 individual breach incidents. Furthermore, in 82% of cases, all records were breached.

Over 61% of security breaches are attributed to so-called ‘malicious outsiders’. 22% are due to accidental data loss and 12% caused by a ‘malicious insider’. While so-called ‘hacktivists’ account for 2.5% and state sponsored security breaches account for 2.2%.

Despite best efforts, security breaches are inevitable. More and more companies need to accept this. What is most important is how a security breach is dealt with, once it occurs. Ensuring sensitive data is encrypted and worthless to the attacker should a breach occur is vital. However, encryption alone is only part of the solution. In order to protect networks, operators require multiple layers of security assurance including increased traffic control, multi-factor authentication, and dedicated appliances.

While the amount and frequency of security data breaches makes for alarming reading, the problem isn’t going to go away. Malicious attacks, software and threats change on a daily basis, so keeping your system security up-to-date is just a starting point. But businesses need to know the companies providing their services are doing everything within their means to address security risks and manage security breaches in the most professional and appropriate way. If for any reason you are not 100% confident with the service your business is receiving, then you need to seriously consider changing your supplier, as a matter of urgency.

For more information, visit www.mfcomm.co.uk or call +44 (0)1892 514687 and ask to speak to one of our UK business managers.