Reputation is everything and with personal and workplace communications continuously merging, it is becoming an even greater challenge for SMBs to protect their business data. With newsmakers such as WikiLeaks and other high-profile breaches over the last several months, you never know where your information will end up if it lands in the wrong hands – so of course, you must protect it.

According to the sixth annual Ponemon report, 2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach, sponsored by Symantec, for the first time, malicious or criminal attacks are no longer the least common cause of data breaches, but they are the most expensive. While malicious attacks are on the rise, organizations are more proactively protecting themselves from hostile threats. But, this shouldn’t overshadow the impact that negligence has on an organization. Negligence remains the most common cause of data breaches at 41 percent.

These...