Every day more than 200,000 new computer viruses are discovered; many of them are designed not only to cause malicious damage to your company’s systems but also to threaten the security of its customer records and financial information. Yet only a quarter of these threats are actually identified, detected and resolved by conventional anti-virus programs, according Brian Krebs’ report. IT solutions contractors and data protection and back-up services are vital to the success of a company, potentially saving thousands if not millions of malicious dollars on threats to both customers and organizations.

No sector is imune to the threat of a data breach. The healthcare industry, for example, has to abide by regulatory requirements regarding the safety of its data, yet American hospitals lose approximately $6 billion annually to data breaches. Since August 2009, more than 30 million patient records have been compromised as a result of data breaches according to a study by Redspin, a U.S security firm. That staggering figure only hints at the true cost of data breaches globally. Bringing in managed IT services contractors can be a valuable step in identifying potentially breaches and resolving any security issues.

Any personal data — whether of company employees, yourself or your customers — can be stolen if the wrong type of person gets access to your systems. In fact, you have a one in 33 chance f becoming a victim of identity theft in the next year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed recently. More than 15 million Americans have run afoul of such tricksters every year and the cost of identity theft in terms of financial losses has been estimated as $50 billion. Little wonder then that executives from 300 companies that were surveyed listed security of company records as atop five critical concern for their business. You should be concerned, too, because no business is immune to data breaches.

A considered policy and system in place to address security and privacy issues for both clients and employees is vital and cannot be an ad hoc arrangement. It needs to take into account the data protection and backup needs of the company as well as the data recovery requirements to ensure that valuable knowledge capital is not lost in the event of a system failure. Ger more information on this topic here.