Expert Advice: How to Up Your Cyber SecurityWhat you need to know to fend off a hack attack

The average cost to a U.S. business of a lost or stolen record containing customer information is $201, according to the 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study conducted by the Ponemon Institute for IBM. The most expensive incidents are due to malicious attacks, not to human error or process failure. That's a problem for your business.

Mega-retailer Target may have had to pay cash to counter its late-2013 data hack, which reportedly affected up to 110 million customers, but it was lucky. Similar breaches have resulted in the destruction of companies.