Introduction and Article Context
This executive summary consolidates insights from the IBM and Ponemon Institute’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024,” focusing on ransomware, backup, operational resilience, business continuity, data security, and compliance. It highlights key findings and demonstrates how NeuShield and Actifile can impact these areas effectively, thereby reducing risks due to a breach.

Key Findings and Impact of NeuShield and Actifile
Ransomware

• Finding: Ransomware attacks remain a prevalent and costly threat, with the average cost of a data breach reaching USD 4.88 million, a 10% increase from the previous year.
  
• NeuShield Impact: Utilizes Mirror Shielding™ technology to protect files from being modified or encrypted, allowing for immediate restoration of original data without relying on backups.
  
• Actifile Impact: Continuously scans and encrypts sensitive data, ensuring that even if ransomware breaches the perimeter, the data remains protected and unusable by attackers.

Backup and Data Recovery

• Finding: Effective use of AI and automation in security operations significantly reduces breach costs and accelerates breach response times.
  
• NeuShield Impact: Enhances traditional backup solutions by offering immediate data recovery capabilities, ensuring that the original data can be quickly restored even if backups are compromised.
  
• Actifile Impact: Preemptively encrypts sensitive files, ensuring that encrypted data can be easily recovered and decrypted, safeguarding critical information.

Operational Resilience and Business Continuity

• Finding: Business disruptions due to data breaches are significant, with 70% of organisations experiencing substantial operational interruptions.
  
• NeuShield Impact: Supports operational resilience by allowing immediate restoration of encrypted or modified files, minimising business disruption.
  
• Actifile Impact: Reduces monetary risk by over 90% within hours, ensuring continuous operations and quick recovery from cyber incidents.

Data Security

• Finding: Data breaches involving customer PII are the most common and costly, with shadow data breaches increasing costs by 16%.
  
• NeuShield Impact: Prevents unauthorised changes to files, ensuring data integrity and security.
  
• Actifile Impact: AI Autonomous Sentry continuously scans, classifies, and encrypts sensitive data, providing comprehensive data security.

Compliance

• Finding: Regulatory fines are a significant component of post-breach costs, with increasing percentages of organisations paying substantial fines.
  
• NeuShield Impact: Aids compliance by ensuring data protection and restoration, helping organisations meet data protection regulations.
  
• Actifile Impact: Ensures compliance with data protection and privacy standards by providing detailed forensic evidence post-breach and tracking sensitive data movements, in addition to data security features.

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How NeuShield and Actifile Address Key Recommendations from the IBM “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024”

Invest in AI and Automation

• Enhance security operations with AI and automation to reduce costs and improve breach response times:
  
  • NeuShield: Ensures immediate recovery of files affected by ransomware without relying on backups, significantly reducing downtime and recovery costs.
    
  • Actifile: Utilises AI-driven data encryption and monitoring to continuously scan, classify, and protect sensitive data. This automation reduces the time and resources needed for breach detection and response, leading to lower costs and faster containment.
    
• Know your Information Landscape. Apply these technologies across identification, detection, prevention, investigation, and response to maximise their benefits:
  
  • NeuShield: Acts in the prevention and response phases by preventing unauthorised changes to files and allowing for instant data restoration, ensuring business continuity.
    
  • Actifile: Enhances detection, prevention, and response by automatically encrypting sensitive data and monitoring its movement, providing real-time risk assessments and immediate protective actions.

Strengthen Data Management

• Implement comprehensive data security posture management to monitor and protect data across all environments, including public and private clouds and on-premises systems:
  
  • NeuShield: Ensures data integrity across all environments by protecting files from unauthorised changes and allowing for their immediate restoration, which is crucial for maintaining a strong security posture.
    
  • Actifile: Provides comprehensive visibility and control over sensitive data in all environments. The AI Autonomous Sentry continuously scans and classifies data, ensuring that all sensitive information is protected and visible to IT departments.
    
• Focus on reducing shadow data by ensuring all data is managed and visible to IT departments:
  
  • NeuShield: Helps reduce the risks associated with shadow data by protecting all files from unauthorised modifications, regardless of where they are stored.
    
  • Actifile: Continuously scans for and identifies shadow data, integrating it into the overall data management strategy. This ensures that all data is visible, managed, and protected.

Enhance Incident Response

• Regularly conduct cyber crisis simulation exercises to prepare security and business teams for potential breaches:
  
  • NeuShield: Supports incident response preparedness by ensuring that data can be quickly restored after a ransomware attack, allowing teams to practice and refine their response strategies without the risk of data loss.
    
  • Actifile: Provides detailed forensic data and real-time monitoring that can be used during simulation exercises to improve response strategies and ensure comprehensive incident preparedness.
    
• Develop and test response plans involving all relevant stakeholders to ensure swift and coordinated actions during a breach:
  
  • NeuShield: Enables swift recovery and continuity of operations, which is essential for effective response planning and execution.
    
  • Actifile: Enhances response planning by providing tools for real-time data tracking and encryption, ensuring that all stakeholders have the necessary information to act quickly and effectively during a breach.

Conclusion
Both NeuShield and Actifile provide robust solutions to address critical issues related to ransomware, backup, operational resilience, business continuity, data security, and compliance. NeuShield’s Mirror Shielding™ technology and Actifile’s AI-driven data encryption and monitoring work together to ensure comprehensive protection and quick recovery from cyber incidents. The 2024 report underscores the growing financial impact of data breaches and the critical need for robust security measures. By leveraging advanced technologies, improving data management, and enhancing incident response and compliance strategies, organizations can significantly mitigate the costs and disruptions associated with data breaches, supporting their overall security posture and operational continuity.

Presentation files
Neushield Data Sentinel
Actifile Data Security Platform