Imperva White Paper Sample

Businesses in nearly every segment of the economy rely on Web applications to interface with customers and partners, and to manage financial, supply chain, CRM data. Online retail sales continue to escalate, reaching a projected $267.8 billion in 20101. Online banking, reservations, and bill pay expose banks, utilities, airlines, insurers, phone companies and many more organizations to inordinately expensive data breaches.

By making data more accessible, Web applications have dramatically increased the business risks associated with that data. Applications are vulnerable to a complex mix of threats, including targeted Web-based hacking from individuals outside the organization, to advanced script and bot attacks, and zero-day Web worms. To illustrate these risks, a new sensitive data breach is disclosed every week. Over 245 million records containing sensitive information have been compromised between January 2005 and December 2008 , and many of these data breaches are due to high-profile Web application attacks. Data compromises can be financially devastating because businesses must investigate the breach, notify victims, and even provide credit monitoring services to victims. In addition, many businesses spend millions of dollars on auditing services, legal defense, public relations, and inbound and outbound communications costs. When combining the costs of breach notification, legal expenses, lost business and customer churn, it is not surprising that the total expense of a single breach can range from millions to even billions of dollars.