Cybercrime is on the rise. The number of ransomware attacks has increased by 18%, while the worldwide volume of phishing attacks doubled to 500 million in 2022. Depending on the size of the business, one-third to two-thirds of businesses suffer malware attacks in any given year.

And those attacks are costing companies a lot of money. In 2022, American businesses lost $10.3 billion to data breaches and cybercrime.

This is all happening while companies are spending trillions digitizing their business operations and trying to obtain secure cyber insurance while keeping up with regulatory changes in GDPR, HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

The best way to weather these challenges is to become a cyber resilient business. That means implementing a layered security and data management strategy that encompasses prevention, protection, and recovery so that your data, your bottom line, and your reputation remain secure.

In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of data security and protection.

How to protect your data

A sophisticated, layered security strategy will already have prevention tools like endpoint and DNS protection in place as well as security awareness training to stop threats before they reach your network.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough. Attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, and that first line of defense may not catch them all.

If a threat can penetrate the prevention layer, protection-layer tools kick in to neutralize the threat or minimize the damage of an attack.

Here are two tools that can protect your data:

1.   Email threat protection and email continuity

Email is one of the most common entry points for attacks, from phishing links to ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) to malicious attachments. Cyber criminals can mimic trustworthy senders so you need a tool that helps you tell the difference between a safe email and suspicious one.

Tools like Webroot’s Advanced Email Threat Protection analyze the links and attachments in messages to detect malware and keep your systems secure against threats. Webroot Email Continuity can continue to send and receive emails for up to 30 days even if the infrastructure is down.

2.   Email encryption

Companies rely on email to distribute important information, but when that information is confidential and sensitive, you need an encryption tool to protect it. If a cyber criminal gets access to emails, they won’t be able to access that sensitive data if it’s encrypted.

Webroot Advanced Email Encryption powered by Zix is an industry-grade encryption tool that runs in the background, without disrupting workflows or requiring any input from the user. It’s invisible to the user and requires no extra training, while keeping your communications confidential. Also, default and customizable Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are available at no additional cost to prevent unauthorized users from emailing sensitive data to parties outside the organization.

Customer stories

When Spitzer Automotive’s new Chief Information Officer joined the company in 2019, he realized there was a big problem that affected the company’s security and employee productivity: employees were spending too much time reviewing emails for spam. One phishing attack slipping through human review could cause big problems for the company in downtime, financial loss, and reputational damage.

Spitzer chose Webroot’s Advanced Email Threat Protection and Email Continuity as a cloud-based solution to pair with Microsoft 365. Not only were they able to save money by bundling the two together, but it also allowed the company to automate email protection by reducing the number of email threats and quarantining malicious emails.

Allery, Asthma, and Sinus Center had a different reason for using Webroot Email Threat Protection and Email Continuity. As a healthcare group, they had sensitive patient data to protect and a ransomware attack from malicious emails could put that at risk.

Once they put the Webroot system in place, they were able to focus on other IT matters while knowing that patient data was safe. It also allowed them to be HIPAA compliant.

To learn more about building cyber resilience with layered security, download our guide.