If you remember the old TV commercials for oil changes or something to your car, the guy said "you can pay me now, or pay me later." Even if you don't remember the commercial, the saying is true today about data breaches.

Forrester Research examined 28 companies that had data breaches and attempted to put a cost to the work involved in dealing with these information security issues. "After calculating the expenses of legal fees, call centers, lost employee productivity, regulatory fines, stock plummets, and customer losses, it can be dizzying, if not impossible, to come up with a true number," wrote senior analyst Khalid Kark. "Although studies may not be able to determine the exact cost of a security breach in your organization, the loss of sensitive data can have a crippling impact on an organization's bottom line, especially if it is ill-equipped, and it's important to be able to make an educated estimate of its cost."

What Forrester came up with was a cost per record of between $90 and $305. As you review your procedures, training and budget, ask yourself if you'd rather control the cost up front with a lower amount for solid protection, or $90 - $305 after your reputation is damaged? Pay it now, or pay it later. As you go into the second quarter, review your multi factor authentication to see how it is doing, and review data security measures while you're there.