When you think of smart investments, you might think of stocks, real estate or the latest technology startups. However, there’s another kind of investment that provides both in the immediate and the long-term cybersecurity. This crucial investment protects businesses from costly cyberattacks and helps them avoid expensive penalties and losing confidence from customers.

As digital transformation transforms business operations of businesses, they produce and manage an ever-increasing ensuring compliance in an ever-changing tech landscape volume of data. The data has to be handled across complex computing environments. These environments include cloud, enterprise data centres and a range of connected devices like Internet of Things sensors and robotics. This increased complexity results in an greater attack surface, which makes critical information more vulnerable to being hacked and lost.

Aside from the financial costs Data breaches can also harm the reputation of a company and result in long-term losses in sales. A recent study found that the average cost of the data breach is $4 million, which is difficult for any business to take on. Regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act or the General Data Protection Regulation also apply severe penalties to companies who do not adhere to the highest security standards.

In today’s competitive economy an effective cybersecurity posture is vital to growth. A pound of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it’s more cost-effective to invest in preventative measures than the cost of cleaning up and recovering following an incident. By implementing the proper tools and technologies, businesses can ensure that their data is secure in transit, in the middle and in the middle, by implementing encryption and focusing on the human firewall and regularly conducting deep checks.