Few people ask themselves this question. It is crucial when it comes to considering the security of Your organization.
Long ago, when information was passed on by word of mouth, the most important element was location. Craftsmen and manufacturers on the main streets of towns often had higher revenues than those located further away from the main square. Sometimes it turned out that someone won in quality and shops of a similar profession opened on their street. Shoemakers, Blacksmiths, Goldsmiths or Bakers concentrated on one street often caused that street to take the name of the profession of the owners of the shops. And so, the best Shoemaker could be located on Blacksmith Street. Such information spread by word of mouth to neighboring towns.
Today, this role is played by Your domain name and the status it has achieved both in search results, but also in customer comments on various portals (e.g. Google Maps, Trustpilot). How do You protect Your domain?
The second important thing is Your trademarks. Your logo or trademark is extremely valuable. It could be the name of Your signature product? Have You made sure that no one impersonates it? Or sells a lower quality product under a similar name? Imagine that Yourun a coffee shop called "My Coffee". Youuse a domain with Your own name "mycoffee.com" and You have customers all over the world because You know a unique way of roasting coffee. What happens if someone comes up with the idea to impersonate Youand packs coffee from the supermarket in a package under the name "My Best Coffee", and uses the my-coffee.com domain for online sales, and the online shop itself is visually similar to Yours?
If Yourun an online shop and You already have a sufficiently large number of regular customers, You should be very careful to ensure that their data is properly protected. There can be no situation in which someone obtains Your customers' data and then publishes it on the dark web. At that point, You'll lose all the trust You`ve built over the years. Mistakes happen to all players, even the biggest ones. Over the years, they have been made by, among others, Yahoo (2016&2017), Facebook (2021), AT&T (2024), X (ex Twitter) (2018,2023,2024), Microsoft (2019). Of course, here we are talking about the leak of billions of records containing various personal data. However, in the opinion of several thousand of Your customers, You'll lose trust.
However, the greatest value and at the same time the greatest threat to Your organization are Your employees. They are the ones who contact Your customers on a daily basis, process orders, shipping. They are the ones who can steal Your customers' data without any suspicion. It is enough for them to write down information such as phone number, e-mail, shipping address in personal notes. Finally, they can track and later blackmail Your customers. Impossible? If You run a store with erotic accessories, a dishonest employee can (having access to e-mail addresses) find a potential victim on a social networking site, then find the contact details of the potential victim's partner. Compare the size of the gadgets ordered and when there is a discrepancy with the dimensions of the partner, the person no longer becomes a victim but a target. Now, using basic social engineering (e.g. a fake account on the same portal), all You need to do is send a message demanding a ransom. A dishonest employee will not care about hiding the source of information and will focus only on achieving financial benefits. The victim will certainly associate the source of the leak and a successful process for Your business will begin.
The worst thing about this for You is that the data leak may not be spectacular; traceable in the system. An employee will simply associate the name or shipping address as a frequent customer of Your store and write it down on a piece of paper.
Therefore, there is no clear recipe for all companies to state: my company is 100% safe. Only an audit conducted by a specialist is able to indicate areas of potential threat. Even after implementing all audit recommendations, it is not possible to state: now it is 100%. The human factor is unpredictable and always leaves a certain percentage of risk.