What Damage Could Hackers Cause to Your Business?

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), hacking prevention systems cost UK business an additional £16bn every year.

That’s a lot of money to invest, but when you consider the potential damage hackers can cause to an organisation it is definitely money well spent.

Lost revenue

There are a number of high profile cases in which major brands have lost huge sums of money following a data hack, including Sony ($170m in 2011), CitiGroup ($2.7m in 2011) and AT&T ($2m, also in 2011).

The amount of money an organisation could lose from an attack varies depending on the size of that organisation as well as the nature of the attack, but it is possible that an SME would be placed in serious financial trouble following a security hack.

There are a number of reasons a hack could cost an organisation a lot of money, including paying to fix holes in existing security systems, repairing damage and even paying the hackers to remove the virus.

Loss of information

An attack will often result in the irreparable damage or permanent deletion of critical data, which can have serious repercussions for an organisation.

The last couple of years has seen the rise of ransomware, a form of attack that locks a user out of a single computer or network of computers until a ransom is paid. One of the most common ransomware attacks is Cryptolocker, which has affected thousands of businesses and individuals all over the globe. It is estimated that around $3 million dollars was extorted from victims of this particular trojan.

Damaged reputation

Many organisations, particularly those that store sensitive information about clients and customers, can have their reputation seriously damaged following a security breach.

Banks, social media websites and retailers are all vulnerable reputationally should they be attacked by hackers. Ebay, LinkedIn and JP Morgan Chase have all been victims of significant data breaches that damaged consumer confidence in the organisations’ ability to keep their data safe.

As consumers hand over important and sensitive data to more and more organisations online, the risk of that data being accessed by hackers increases.

To ensure they are able to keep their customers’ data secure, as well as their own, it is essential that organisations invest in reliable security software that is tried and tested in the fight against hackers.

Contact the team here at ITC Security to find out more how we can help you to protect your business from attack.