Welcome to 2018! Our New Year began with the “Spectre” of a “Meltdown” for Intel and AMD (apologies for the puns), sending these tech giants scrambling to protect customer data exposed through design flaws in their microprocessors.

At the same time, 2018 ushered in DFARS and The Data Breach Prevention and Compensation Act, demonstrating Government’s commitment to raising the bar on cybersecurity. There will be substantial penalties to pay by organizations that do not protect their customers against the increasing incidences of cyber attacks and data leakage.

Whether you are Equifax, Uber, a fledgling startup or somewhere in between, cybersecurity needs to be at the top of your 2018 priority list. Businesses cannot afford to delay in strengthening their security systems against cyber threats.  As the latest incidents show, there is a significant price to pay in damage to reputation when data is exposed and worse damage when there are delays in disclosing the breach. And the government intends to add new penalties for businesses that fail to take all reasonable measures to protect customer data.  If the planned government bills had passed 9 months ago, the Equifax data breach would cost that company more than $21 billion!

So 2018 is the year to upgrade, patch, and deploy infrastructure against cyber attacks. One of the first steps is to ensure your email communications and attachments are secure by making full use of built-in and 3rd party technologies.

Messageware is a leader in solutions to secure Exchange, Outlook Web, and your messaging infrastructure. If you are not already talking to us about best practices in messaging security, then now is the time. Please don’t wait until after you have a security incident.

Click here to read our full newsletter.