In mid-June, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) reintroduced a new version of a bill, the Data Protection Act of 2021, that would create a new independent, executive-level government agency, the Data Protection Agency (DPA). The DPA would “protect Americans’ data, safeguard their privacy, and ensure data practices are fair and transparent.”
Senator Kristen Gillibrand is advocating for a Data Protection Agency.
Under the bill, the DPA would have the authority and resources to enforce any data protection rules created by Congress or the agency itself, backed by a range of enforcement tools, including civil penalties, injunctive relief, and equitable remedies. In addition to creating privacy rules and enforcing federal-level rules, the DPA would reach out to organizations to promote data protection and encourage the adoption of model privacy and data protection standards, guidelines and policies.
The new bill, spells out DPA’s three core missions:
- Authorize DPA to create and enforce data protection rules to give Americans more control and protection over their data by regulating high-risk data practices and personal data collection.
- Foster innovation by ensuring fair competition within the digital marketplace by having DPA’s research unit analyze and report on data protection and privacy innovation across sectors. The research unit would also develop the model privacy and data protection templates.
- Prepare the American government for the digital age by advising Congress on emerging privacy and tech issues while coordinating with Federal agencies and State regulators to promote consistent regulatory treatment of personal data.
Ransomware may be dominating the headlines these days, but basic consumer data protection is still of primary concern for many firms. Data theft is still the original hack and remains a a significant problem. The costs and effects of any data breach are extremely detrimental to your business and could even be fatal.
IT service and security companies always warn their clients about just how bad a data breach could be. However, you need to know more than generalities. It’s time for some specifics about the total potential consequences.
60% of small businesses that suffer a data attack are out of business within six months.
If that sounds high, just take a look at the costs involved.
Regulatory Fines
Many industries have security regulations to protect customer data – And they come with hefty fines if a company fails to uphold their end of the security requirements. For example, “willful neglect” with HIPAA data can lead to a $1.5 million fine for just one violation (Fines of $4.8 million have occurred). That’s not something a small business in the healthcare industry can typically survive. What this means is that you must double, and triple check how your patient data is handled. Other national and international regulatory bodies may also impose fines if a data breach was caused from improper security.
A secondary but also significant part of this cost is notification. For sensitive information like healthcare records, a company must notify all their customers immediately that data was stolen – And e-mail isn’t always an option. Postage adds up very quickly when you’re required to send out hundreds or thousands of first-class letters!
Operational Shutdown
A hacking attempt can leave a business unable to use their software or devices. This means their revenue stream dries up. Approximately 29% of businesses that experience a data breach lose revenue, and 38% of those companies lost more than 20% of their revenue. Large data breaches may also involve non-revenue activities to notify customers, like establishing call centers and developing FAQ-based web pages.
Employee Productivity Issues
Even if you manage to keep operations going, that doesn’t mean productivity is going to be maintained. Employees tend to get really stressed when a data breach affects their work. Combine this stress with the extra job requirements they now face, and it’s no wonder employees don’t get much work done. Studies have shown that cases of identity theft eat up around 175 employee work hours – And that’s assuming everything else functions normally.
Investigation Costs
Who hacked the company? What vulnerabilities did they exploit? Exactly what data was stolen, and where is it showing up? Answers to these questions don’t just drop out mid-air—A company needs to set up an investigation, which typically involves hiring outside services, or putting together an internal team. All this takes time and money.
Customers Abandoning Your Business
Talk about bad PR— Would you trust your confidential information to a company that recently had data stolen? A significant number of customers end up leaving or canceling services. Around 22% of businesses lose customers after an attack, and 40% of those lose more than 20% of their customer base. Those customers flee to nearby competitors, which means more resources for them, and less market share for your company.
New Customer Loss
It’s no surprise that new customers are hard to find after a publicized data attack—23% of businesses lose new opportunities after a data attack, and 42% lose more than 20% of potential new business. This can last months into the future depending upon how visible the attack was.
Covering Victims’ Costs
In the case of identity theft, your company will probably be required to pay for credit monitoring and other services for the victims. This is usually around $100 per victim, per year, with requirements running one to two years into the future.
Insurance Problems
Insurance companies don’t like it when their clients experience data theft—Especially if they’re covering disaster-recovery costs or intangible business loss. This means insurance costs go way up, and it could be more difficult to find insurance in the future.
Recovery Costs
Data backup and recovery costs can vary greatly depending upon the system used. However, the real recovery costs of a data breach lie primarily in upgrades, or what is sometimes referred to as “remediation” (a word synonymous with costing a lot of money).
Software and hardware may need to be upgraded and patched to seal the vulnerability that caused the breach. This involves paying for new services, apps, and computers. However, it can get more complicated—If you’re using a piece of software that’s proven to be outdated for modern security measures, you may need to roll out new solutions and rework your entire data strategy. Over time, these costs can become a real headache.
Lawsuits
If it’s proven that data was mishandled, you also must consider the possibility of a lawsuit. It’s not a guarantee, and there’s no certainty that a lawsuit will lead to damages or a settlement—However, people are very sensitive when it comes to their personal data. Don’t discount the possibility of requiring court representation, which adds yet another layer of long-term costs to the disaster.
Helix22, is the world’s foremast data protection product. All consumer data can be protected 100%. Even if by an insider attack, any data that has been stolen cannot be exfiltrated. Period.
What we understand better than anyone else is the new era of data security is one that requires new solutions. At BLAKFX, we understand that protection of your data requires that it be protected wherever it is. Whether on the cloud, in transit on a foreign network or on a trusted suppliers system. Data security cannot just be about protecting your own systems. Therefore, we know that the era of perimeter defenses is over as it is proving impossible to keep hackers from breaching the perimeter and accessing data. Also, E2E encryption based on old models of RSA cryptography will be obsolete when quantum computing becomes more widespread.
Helix22 is Quantum Immune – Start Your Integration on our Git
Helix22 delivers perfect security assurance due to our genius engineering team that has invented a new model for data security that required an innovative look at the problem. The approach we took was to protect the data itself. Almost all other data security products attempt to build a perimeter or being fanatic on user credentials. However, once the product is breached or a password is stolen, even if it is 2FA or encrypted, your firms data is in the clear.
You see, the Helix22 cryptography is embedded with the data itself through our inventive and multi-patented process of DNA BindingTM. Therefore, even if credentials are stolen the data cannot be exfiltrated. This means that all data is 100% protected regardless of the type of attack.
Another substantial advantage of Helix22, is that it protects all data whether at rest, in use or in transit. All communication apps for example, only encrypt data while in transit. Therefore, that encryption become useless for internal IT security or Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning experimentation. All data generated during these massive computing exercises is equally protected in real time. Plus, the latency period for the Helix22 is exponentially less than any other security product, so it actually contributes to faster processing times.
The Helix22 is easy to install and runs on all platforms, programming languages, networks and devices.
Our Motto
“In Math We Trust”
In this protocol, we are truly a “zero-knowledge” server so your private communications and transmissions remain completely top secret. Even in the event that BLAKFX were subpoenaed, we can honor the request by just handing over the encrypted content…as that is literally all we have. Helix22 also only use keys just one-time and then destroys them. This way the data security is future forward prefect. Therefore, in our unique user-to-user encryption (U2U) world, there is no opportunity ever for any data leak.
The Helix22 data security SDK accomplishes the following:
- Protects all your firms data at rest, in use and in transit
- Renders ransomware threats obsolete
- Eliminates human error
- Eliminates all malicious or interior attacks
- Verifies original content i.e. minimizes the threat of impersonation attacks and deep fakes
- Reduces latency
- Installs with 5 lines of code
- Runs on any platform, network, device and in any programming language
- Provides perfect future/forward secrecy
- Delivers “zero-knowledge” encryption
- Compatible with all cloud, 3rd party and vendor services
- Ensures privacy and security for blockchain and all cryptocurrency transactions
- Is quantum ready – so there’s no need to upgrade when the time comes
- Requires no employee training
- Exceeds all gov’t and banking standards
- Meets all international compliance regulations
BLAKFX is Based on Success
Our founders, Robert Statica PhD and Kara Coppa, also founded Wickr, which is used by the US military and has never been hacked since its inception in 2012. The Helix22 data security SDK is several generations enhanced since then. Dr. Statica also delivered the encryption for the world’s most secure phone, Katim.
Founder – Robert Statica PhD Founder – Kara Coppa Founder – Alex Maslov MS, MBA
Co-Founders of Wickr KatimTM Ultra Secure Smartphone
Finally, the Helix22 encryption is quantum computing ready so no need to redo all your data security methodologies in a couple of years when everything else becomes obsolete.
We like to refer to Helix22 as “22nd Century Data Security.”
Helix22 – Zero Risk