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The costs of cyber attacks are rising dramatically. A study by IBM shows that costs of a cyber attack have risen sharply to $3.9 million per strike in 2018. On average, in 2017, companies spent nearly $11.7 million cyber attacks, 23% more than they did the previous year.
It’s about more than just the upfront costs. While financials takes into account the amount of money lost to a company when they are breached, it does not even begin to look at the long term effects of lost potential revenue, reputation, or morale. When taking into account the turnover of customers and a loss of reputation and goodwill, the average cost of lost business can be as much as $4.13 million per company.
Timing is everything. Accenture estimates that the amount of time an attack takes from a company is an average of 50 days – that is almost two months where priorities are upside down and a great deal of work cannot be accomplished.
What is lost may not be returned. Information loss is the most costly part of a cyber attack representing 43% of associated costs. If you are not actively protecting information from being ransomed or lost, you are risking huge losses.
Data Pirates. In particular, ransomware damage grew 15 times in less than two years to more than $5 billion in 2017 according to CSO Online.
Per person. Breaches cost the average affected American around $225 per individual according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study.
Global crisis. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, damage related to cybercrime is projected to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021.
The numbers are stark reminders of just how dire of a problem cybercrime is on an international scale. Many companies never recover from a major breach and a lack of preparedness puts the financial life of any organization at risk.