Can Your Business Survive a Catastrophic Cyber Attack?

No matter how big or small your business is, the cost of a cyberattack is high. You will not only find yourself financially struggling to recover, but your reputation will suffer greatly. A catastrophic cyberattack could destroy your business. Every business is at risk of an attack, and cyber criminals are consistently evolving new ways to steal sensitive information and breach your virtual walls. Cyberattacks are extremely costly and when considering the long-term impact, many businesses may not survive.

The Cost of a Cyberattack

All cyberattacks and data breaches are expensive for your small business. They are costly to investigate, to respond to, and will also cost your business in time lost and in reputation. In addition, insurers have doubled the cost of premiums to cover themselves in case of cyber crimes, which is pricing many small companies out of insurance to cover cyber crimes entirely. The bad publicity and financial cost from a cyberattack can harm your business for years after the initial data breach. Although a cyberattack may cost a large company more in actual dollars lost, a small company is much less able to absorb this cost, and these costs have increased by 10% over the past five years. The longer it takes to detect and identify the breach, the higher the cost.

What Makes a Cyberattack So Costly?

A cyberattack will impact many pieces of your organization. You will likely lose business, either due to a customer directly leaving in response to the breach or because customers will be impacted by the system downtime. Resources must be diverted to cover the detection and remediation of the attack. This can include auditing services, crisis management teams, IT costs, and investigative or forensic costs. Your organization may need to pay for credit monitoring for your impacted customers as well. You will likely have legal fees, and you may even need to pay fines. After all this, your reputation will have taken a major hit, which means that getting the new business to help cover these costs will likely be much more difficult. Cyberattacks can truly be catastrophic for your company, and recovery, especially if you try to go it alone, can be nearly impossible.

How Your Company Can Reduce the Risk of a Cyberattack

Given the high cost and lasting impact of cyber crimes, investing in plans to reduce the risk of a crime happening all together is a smart choice for businesses of all sizes. Most businesses are not prepared to recover from a cyberattack, so prevention is key. A powerful program we’ve partnered with called CSR Readiness Pro includes the CSR Readiness Pro Risk Assessment and the Breach Reporting Services. Together, these programs help to reduce the risk that your business will be negatively affected by a cyberattack. The risk assessment will help you identify and assess any potential weak points. Once the weak points are identified, recommendations are made to improve your cyber security best practices. If a data breach does occur, the breach reporting service has the expertise to handle the situation, and also guide and help you notify and respond to your customers.

Being proactive and developing a plan for both prevention and recovery is the best way to avoid the high cost of a cyberattack. Your business needs to have a plan in place for security and a planned response to a potential cyberattack, employee training in cyber security best practices, and an investment in a service that will protect your business both before and after a cyberattack. Cyber criminals are always evolving their methods to steal confidential data. Being prepared can ensure that your company won’t be the victim. For more information about how we can help your business become better prepared to ward off a cyber attack, contact AccuShred today.