What Are The Real Costs Of A Cyber Attack? 

We’ve all heard the dire warnings from security experts to take every precaution possible to prevent a cyber attack from occurring at your organization. Update security systems, improve access points, educate workforces and the list could go on and on with ways to harden your business defenses. But do we really know what the cost is should one occur at our business or what the impact is on our nation as a whole? 

Let’s see what the experts say is the ultimate price tag on a data breach, hacking or online scam for individual businesses and the nation’s economy. 

The Monetary Cost

Since we are looking at the financial impact of a data breach or cyber attack, let’s widen and look at this issue globally. According to Statista online, “The global average cost per data breach was 4.45 million U.S. dollars in 2023.” This is a 15% increase over 3 years.

Focusing on the United States, the statistics show us that the average cost of a data breach “amounted to 9.48 million U.S. dollars, up from 9.44 million U.S. dollars in the previous year.” Keep in mind that we are not through all of 2023 and the numbers are already higher than the last few years on average.  

The 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute also shows that there are four segments that are financially impacted including the lost business cost, detection and escalation, the post breach response, and notification to clients and customers. 

In terms of specific industries and how they are impacted, it should come as no surprise that the healthcare industry is the most affected in the United States. The 2022 Data Breach Report explains that “for the twelfth consecutive year, the healthcare industry has the highest data breach costs. In 2022, the healthcare industry is paying an average of US$ 10.10 million for a data breach, 9.4% more than the figure in 2021.”

Another interesting fact in the report included the finding that  Zero Trust Strategies reduced the average cost of a data breach by $1.76 Million!

The Cost of Reputation 

While the financial cost of a cyber attack can be debilitating and even business-ending for some companies, the loss of reputation can be just as damaging. 

Breaches can physically corrupt databases, but they can also corrupt the minds of both current and future customers who may come to associate your brand and brand name with a data breach. To the clients and customers who had to handle the breach on an individual level, they may question if your organization did enough to secure their data. They may also wonder what repercussions lay down the road should their personal information be used in malicious ways. In short, your brand name will be tarnished and your reputation may be harder to regain than one would think.

Need help protecting your organization from a data breach or cyber attack? Talk to our team at Spectra Networks.