With companies handling more and more private information, the risks of an IT security breach creating commercial harm to a company are very real. And to a large extent, avoidable.

Breaches in IT security can do enormous damage to a company's brand, according to a study by Goizueta Business School Emory Marketing Institute.

According to the study, companies experiencing a data breach can lose an average of 2.6 per cent of their customer base. That's not even taking into account the millions spent on recovery costs, legal advice, mail notification letters, calls to individual customers, and discounted product offers. A few breaches would leave the business with some serious problems.

The researchers suggest developing a model for brand trust that takes in competencies and values. The latter is related to ethics and privacy, the former around security capabilities and compliance.

More importantly, the focus has to go on putting the customer first. That is the key to maintaining trust.

One would say it would be even more critical given that completely water-tight secure systems are hard to find.