By Ethel Crosby, director of technology operations and offerings, One North

Cyber-attacks and data breaches unfortunately aren’t new to the business world. Worse, clean up from these attacks can be extremely costly — both from a monetary and reputational perspective. Take Equifax as an example. On July 22, 2019, the company agreed to pay the largest settlement on record for a data breach, up to $700 million, to investigate claims stemming from its 2017 breach. If you tack on damage to the Equifax brand, it’s easy to see the high price organizations pay when they fail to proactively protect themselves from security incidents.