When you think of smart investments, you could imagine stocks, real estate or the latest technology startups. There is a different type of investment with both immediate and long-term benefits: cybersecurity. This crucial investment protects businesses from costly cyberattacks as well as assists them in avoiding costly fines and the loss of trust from customers.

As digital Due Diligence Checklist transformation transforms business operations, enterprises are creating, manipulating and storing an ever-growing volume of data that must be managed effectively across complex computing environments. These environments are routinely spanning cloud and enterprise data centers as well as a host of connected devices including Internet of Things sensors and robots. This complexity increases the risk of an greater attack surface, which makes critical data more vulnerable to exploitation and loss.

In addition to the financial burdens of data breaches, they can also harm a company’s reputation and result in long-term sales losses. Recent research has revealed that the average cost for a data breach was around $4 million. This is a huge impact on any company. Additionally, regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation impose steep fines on companies that don’t meet strict security standards.

In today’s competitive economy having a solid cybersecurity strategy is vital to growth. A pound of prevention is worth a pound cure, and it’s far more economical to invest in preventative measures instead of the cost of cleaning up and recovering following a breach. By implementing the appropriate tools and technologies, businesses can ensure that their data is secure in transit, at rest and in between by implementing encryption by focussing on the human firewall and regularly conducting deep checks.