DavidIt may seem odd to suggest that a company spending money on cybersecurity can actually save them money in the long run, but it’s true. No matter the industry or size, every type of business will be affected by a cybercrime, so it’s important to have cybersecurity measures in place beforehand. There are several ways that taking preventative measures against cybercrime can save money over time, and today, we’ll look at a few of the biggest.
Cost of an Attack vs. Cost of Prevention
The average cost of a cybercrime depends not only on the size and scope of the business but also on the type of attack. According to a2020 Study by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a ransomware attack is $440,750. A foreign government-sponsored nation-state attack, however, has an average cost of over $1.5 million.
Cybersecurity measures, even the most expensive, pale in comparison. If a moderately sized company spent $5,000 per year to improve its overall cybersecurity measures, it would take over 88 years for that spending to equal the average cost of one ransomware attack.
Ransomware attacks are a type of cybercrime where hackers gain access to your system, change the passwords to lock you out, and then demand massive ransoms, usually sent in Bitcoin to offshore accounts, before they’ll restore your access – if they ever do. As this can cripple a business financially or even put them out of business, any amount of money spent to prevent them seems trivial in comparison.
The Costs and Value of Cybersecurity
The value of quality cybersecurity measures cannot be overstated. In a world where accidentally clicking the wrong link in an email can allow hackers access to company servers and potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, it’s essential that companies stay on the offensive and try to prevent these costly attacks before they occur.
That being said, most companies don’t have infinite budgets, which is why it’s important to determine what level of protection is right for your business and how much it will cost. Some of the most important measures to take will cost the company very little money, like backing up the servers onto external hard drives regularly. Those hard drives should also not be plugged in or connected to a computer when not in use, as hackers won’t be able to access them if they’re online.
It’s also important to provide regular employee training sessions, including refresher courses on a regular basis. Suppose an employee receives a phone call and gets tricked by a hacker into revealing company passwords or disabling firewalls. In that case, the best cybersecurity software in the world won’t be able to prevent that hacker from doing damage.
Taking proper precautions and using preventative cybersecurity measures may seem inconvenient or potentially expensive (depending on the extent of your company’s network), but those costs are very little compared to the potential losses the business would suffer if an attacker succeeded in illegally accessing sensitive data. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”