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What Will a Data Breach Cost Your Agency?April-14-07 Worried about what a security breach could cost your agency? Security breaches can cost officials dearly when it comes to a marred public image and loss in voter confidence and the financial costs to the agency can be staggering. An insurance company is offering a free online tool to help you calculate the risks and a fraud prevention firm is giving a million dollar guarantee that their system will protect people whose identity has been breached. The calculator doesn't help individuals seeking to recover from identity fraud, or who are curious what the cost of restoring a ruined credit history would be. The insurance company, Darwin Professional Underwriters, analyzed data from media reports and other sources to come up with algorithms for the calculator. According to the tool, available online, a breach that exposes 75,000 identities will cost an organization $9.9 million on average. One third of the cost or $3.47 million is needed to provide credit monitoring to alert potential victims when their information is misused. That amount should give officials in Fulton County Georgia some pause. The Georgia Secretary of State last week asked Fulton County officials to immediately begin contacting all Fulton County voters of the potential exposure of their personal information. More than 75,000 voters were placed at risk when 30 boxes of voter registration cards were found in a dumpster. Last year, Chicago voters filed a class action lawsuit against the Elections board for a similar breach involving voter registration information of 1.3 million voters published on the Board's Web site. Risk mitigation companies have been searching for a solution to the problem for years. Most offer credit monitoring as the answer, but recent reports indicate credit monitoring is insufficient protection for people whose confidential information is known to have been compromised. Inder P. Singh, Former Global Chief Technology Officer for Visa International said in 2005,"The only solutions thus far for consumers have been reactive - by then, it's too late." One company is so confident that their system works to protect consumers even after the information is compromised that they publish their CEO's own confidential information online to prove it. Todd Davis the Chief Executive Officer for LifeLock
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