Safeguarding and securing information is an important aspect of business that allows for preventing and minimizing risks. With data breach or incidents in which information is compromised, both businesses and consumers are greatly impacted, due to adverse consequences that may follow. The globalization of today’s economy is dependent upon electronic access via the internet, email, and “other components of “cyberspace,” including the global consumer credit card payment networks. Different types of informational or data breaches that significantly affect business functions involve compromise of financial data, customer’s private information, and business proprietary data.
Data breaches totaled 1,540 worldwide in 2014 …show more content…
Before the age of electronic data, company exclusive information was available in limited capacity, via hardcopy, often with restricted access and not easily disseminated. Revolutionizing of data to electronic format has made it even more difficult to preserve this valuable and exclusive information. Data protection is imperative to maintaining competing edge and the return on investment is necessary to ensure that companies continue to thrive. Many companies earmark millions in fiscal expenditures on maintaining securitizing their data and resources. With the electronic information age, materials relating to marketing efforts, including, “client lists, costs, and financial information, just to name a few, now exist in electronic format and are easily accessible on company intranets—which makes it all the more portable to a disgruntled employee” (Shaffer, 2008, para. 7) . Biotechnology companies for example, depend on new medical development to maintain competitive edge in the industry. Researches are often ongoing and may take years for the company to cultivate and advance its product before publicizing or marketing the final product. “Sometimes, however, an employee deliberately takes or divulges key information to gain a competitive advantage, requiring additional measures to dissuade use or minimize loss” (Elliott, 2007, para. 3). A biotech company in Iceland, deCODE Genetics (Reykjavik, Iceland) experienced this when a former employee shared the company’s “proprietary genealogical database, research plans, methods and tools to another company as they prepared to form a new venture that would compete with deCODE—the Center for Applied Genomics at the Children 's Hospital of Philadelphia” (Elliott, 2007, para. 3). Although, litigation was brought against the employee, oftentimes it is too