When you think about smart investments, you could imagine stocks, real estate or the latest technology startups. Another type of investment that has both immediate and long-term benefits: cybersecurity. This investment is essential to protect businesses from expensive cyberattacks, and it helps companies avoid costly fines and losing the trust of customers.

As digital transformation transforms business operations, companies are creating and manipulating an ever-growing amount data that requires effective management across complex computing environments. These environments typically span cloud as well as enterprise data centers and a host of connected devices such as Internet of Things sensors and robots. This increased complexity results in an greater attack surface, which makes critical data more vulnerable to being hacked and lost.

In addition to the financial costs of data breaches, they can affect a company’s reputation and result in long-term sales losses. Recent research showed that the average cost for a data breach was $4 million. This is a huge impact for any company. Additionally, laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation impose severe penalties on companies that fail to meet m&a tools for comprehensive market analysis and competitor research the strict security requirements.

In today’s competitive market security is a must. is essential to growth. A pound of prevention is worth a pound cure, and it’s far more cost-effective to invest in preventative measures instead of paying for cleanup and recovery following an incident. With the right tools and technologies, businesses can ensure that their information is safe in transit, rest and in the middle. This means using encryption, focusing on the human firewall, as well as performing regular deep-checks.