Costs Are Greater Than You Think
According to FBI data, social engineering attacks cost companies an average of $ 130,000 and cost millions of dollars for many. However, victims of cyberattacks will say that these losses are only part of the damage suffered. There are up to “five pains” caused by successful cyber attacks:
Immediate financial loss
Recovery cost
Loss of productivity
Business interruption
Reputational risk
How much pain do you endure? With every successful cyberattack, you can be assured that you will lose some productivity, no matter how small. Someone needs to fix the problem, make changes, or deal with the delay. If you catch an attack early, productivity loss can be the only loss. Attacks that are too late to detect often come with multiple pains that make incident processing even more difficult.
This means that each successful attack will cause 1-5 pains. Our list ranks according to what people first think when faced with the risk of a cyberattack. In reality, the severity of the impact is often the exact opposite. Direct financial losses and recovery costs are often paid in the quarter in which they occur, but business turmoil and reputational loss can damage a company’s finances for months or years.
Five pains represent what protects the tissue. Cyber criminals may want your money or secrets, but the damage is usually far more than cash. To protect your business, you must first protect your employees from themselves. Social engineering, spearfishing, and related technologies target employees, the weakest link in cybersecurity. Let’s talk about pain first.
Direct financial loss
The most noticeable pain is direct financial loss. That’s what drives the fascinating headlines. Measurements are usually easy and often directly related to the impact of cybercriminal attacks. Social engineering and phishing scams are very effective. They created a new technique called whaling. This directly attacks the CEO and CFO. Damages typically range from a minimum of $ 25,000 to a loss of millions of dollars.
Recovery Cost
Recovery Cost is also relatively easy to calculate. The organization paid the incident response team for post-attack cleanup. New software is purchased to fix breaches and protect against future intruders. Credit monitoring is purchased for affected customers. These are the invoices you can sum up. Many incidents actually lead to data loss rather than theft of company funds or data extortion, resulting in auctions of transaction secrets and customer information to bidders on the dark web.
Loss of Productivity
Every cyberattack comes with a loss of productivity. Full documentation is often important and difficult. Countless meetings, employee updates, customer communication, and other activities go far beyond the IT and security teams. Every minute, employees spend less time discussing and taking action about cybersecurity breaches.
Business disruption
Loss of productivity measures the impact on employee time and attention. Business disruption is about the impact on customers and the supply chain. If your device isn’t working, you may have to work overtime to make up for the delay. If you can’t ship your products from the warehouse, you may not be able to meet your quarterly sales goals, or you may spend time expediting shipments to compensate for delays. Customers of concern can immediately try out suppliers who can supply competing products. After a breach, banks and insurance companies may ask you to review your security practices. Security incidents that disrupt business operations can have long-term implications.
Reputation Risk
It is very difficult to regain the trust of customers and suppliers after a serious cybersecurity incident, especially if it is widely publicized. Is your trust in the supplier shaken if the supplier is compromised and the company’s sensitive information may be lost? This is a natural reaction and can damage a company’s reputation over the years to come.
Prevent the pain of your business
So how do you avoid the five anguish? Implementing comprehensive security can be a daunting task. The specific challenge is to protect against attacks from malware accessed through email, compromised websites, and cloud-based productivity applications. The
FBI reported 17,642 victims of corporate email violations between October 2013 and February 2016. The reported costs of these attacks were $ 2.3 billion, with an average loss of $ 130,000 per incident. However, readers of this post know that this is only part of the cost, as direct economic loss is one of the five pains these companies have endured.
Can I lock down my network, but can I really prevent employees from communicating with customers, suppliers, and partners? There is no chance. This means that the latest cybersecurity tools can protect all windows while a cyberattack comes from the front door thanks to unsuspecting employees.