Dealing with Sensitive Data

Over the past few years, many organizations have found themselves in a position where they have to defend their reputation due to the unauthorized release of sensitive data. The exposure may also have adverse financial and regulatory consequences.

Private equity firms fall into this group because they may collect, analyze, transmit and store data. As a result, those firms that do not focus on data quality and protection run the risk of exposure and possible erosion of investor confidence. In addition, those firms are taking chances if they do not have in place an incident response mechanism to react to security breaches. How a firm responds to such situations is often as important as the event itself — especially to regulators and investors looking over their shoulder.