To many, data security is seen as merely an effort to protect against data loss or exposure. Consequently, this perspective unfairly positions data security as a cost for which the benefit is: “So far as we know, nothing happened.”

A better approach would be to associate the value of the data with the business process it supports and thereby derive significant additional organizational benefits from improved data security.

The Aberdeen Group has identified four high-level categories for potential business value from investments in IT security: manage risk, achieve and sustain compliance, enhance revenue and reduce costs.

By managing risk, firms avoid the monetary loss from systems downtime, the inability to bill and/or collect, and the inability to communicate with customers. Further, proper risk management will help avoid negative publicity, loss of sales, cost of reporting and fines for non-compliance.

Efforts toward achieving compliance will generally result in enhanced business reputation by demonstrating respect for customers’ and employees’ information, achievement of service level agreements and the implementation of industry best practices.

But how can data security efforts enhance revenue? Because data security efforts which focus on process often expose areas of shared information. These areas can then be exploited for cross-selling opportunities, improved transaction time, identification of new services and higher customer retention rates.

Besides revenue enhancement, the other holy grail, of business investment is cost savings. A process-based approach to data security can yield cost savings by identifying ways to streamline activities, scale processes larger and faster, reveal potential efficiencies and improve productivity.

According to the Aberdeen Group, “Organizations with top performance in data protection initiatives allocate the time and resources necessary to succeed well beyond the deployment of enabling technologies.” These organizations make investments in process analysis, awareness, training and reporting and consistently measure and monitor their results to assure that the entire organization benefits from the IT security program.