Can You Afford the Cost of Non-Compliance?

The Ponemon Institute recently released a study titled “The True Cost of Compliance.” This study uncovered the average cost of compliance for organizations is $3.5 million and the cost of non-compliance is nearly $9.4 million. These numbers vary from industry to industry, but the averages accounted for a $5.8 million dollar difference in compliance vs. non-compliance. 

Source: Ponemon True Cost of Compliance

Compliance involves following all privacy and data protection laws and regulations and policies that are designed to protect individuals’ sensitive and confidential information. Costs necessary for compliance include staff to support a risk strategy and enabling technologies to decrease risk. Costs that can occur due to non-compliance include brand losses, legal costs, public relations costs, auditing, consulting, and more.

Some of the most important, but also most difficult, requirements to obey are the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards, the various state data breach notification acts, the European Union Privacy Directive, and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).  Do you know what regulations your organization has to follow? Use the Regulation Finder in the DLP Toolkit to determine which regulations and guidelines you must observe.

What sounds better to you, paying the cost to comply, or approximately 2.65 times the cost of compliance in the event of a data breach? You are not invincible. In 2010, over 16 million records were breached and over $3 billion was spent on remediation.  Do not become a part of this statistic.  Start creating a risk strategy today.