What Is The Potential Financial Damage of Cyber Attacks?
date
Oct 19, 2022
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potential-financial-damage-of-cyber-attacks
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Published
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While it's scary to think about, cyberattacks can be financially damaging. There are many different ways to quantify financial damage, but it is important to understand the risks and how to best protect yourself against them.
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Website
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Author
Buse Eker
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Cyber Security
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What Is The Potential Financial Damage of Cyber Attacks? - FastVPN
The potential financial damage of cyber attacks is not just the loss of data. It's also the loss of trust, both in an organization's ability to protect information and in its ability to meet the needs of its customers.
According to the FBI’s 2021 Internet Crime Report, cybercrime costs in the U.S. reached $6.9 billion in 2021. Ransomware attacks on organizational systems continue to be the number-one threat to large and medium-sized businesses, including government organizations, with damage estimated at $30 billion by 2023.
Cybercriminals target five value assetsPersonal dataIntellectual propertyFinancial informationCustomer relationshipsHuman AssetsBrand reputationHow Cyber Attacks Damage Businesses Financially?Data LossLawsuitUnavailability of Conversion ChannelsWhich Industries Do Cyber Attacks Target and Why?1. Manufacturing:2. Finance:3. Government:Is There Any Way To Prevent This Financial Damage?
Cybercriminals target five value assets
Personal data
This includes everything from your name and address to your bank account details and social media passwords.
Intellectual property
This could be a design or blueprint for a product, or even something as simple as a website's code.
Financial information
This includes customer names, addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers (as well as the security codes on the back of them).
Customer relationships
This includes email lists and other contact details for customers, suppliers and investors.
Human Assets
Employees, contractors and others who work for your company; also includes customers, suppliers and partners in a business relationship with your company
Brand reputation
This includes any positive or negative stories about your business that have been published online; it could also include opinions people have shared about working at your company or buying from you in particular
How Cyber Attacks Damage Businesses Financially?
Cyber attacks can be devastating to businesses, but it's difficult to quantify the exact financial impact. That's because different businesses have different levels of cyber security and different risk profiles, so they're all affected differently by a cyber attack.
Data Loss
The most common financial damage caused by cyber attacks is data loss. If your business loses a large amount of its data, it can be extremely expensive to recover. Depending on how much data is lost, you may have to pay your employees overtime while they work to restore the lost data, which can add up very quickly. In some cases, there might be no way to recover the lost data.
Lawsuit
There are also legal costs associated with recovering from a cyber attack. Some businesses are hit with lawsuits from clients who say that their personal information was compromised during the attack, which can cost even more money than recovering from the initial attack itself.
Unavailability of Conversion Channels
Cyber attacks also causes financial damage when they affect sales or lead generation efforts for your business. If your website becomes unavailable due to an attack or if you experience a significant drop in traffic due to an attack, this could lead customers away from your site and make it harder for you to earn new leads or close sales deals.
Which Industries Do Cyber Attacks Target and Why?
1. Manufacturing:
Because manufacturing is an industry that relies heavily on automation and information technology, these are two areas that cyber attackers are targeting. In addition, there are often high-value products being produced in manufacturing plants (like pharmaceuticals), which makes them a target for theft as well.
2. Finance:
Finance has always been an attractive target for hackers because of the amount of money that flows through financial institutions every day—and no one wants to lose their money! In addition to stealing funds from consumers directly in this industry, hackers have also been known to steal funds from banks in order to make fraudulent purchases or even purchase illegal items like drugs or weapons.
3. Government:
Governments around the world have been targets for cyber attacks because they hold sensitive data about citizens' personal information--and governments themselves often hold sensitive information about other countries' secrets or policies (which could be used against them). This can make government officials easy targets for blackmail if you have access to their personal accounts or emails (such as passwords).
Is There Any Way To Prevent This Financial Damage?
Really, there are no easy answers here. Each organization is different—even attacks can be different, depending on the nature of the operation. While the potential monetary damage of cyber attacks is too vast to accurately estimate, it's clear that the problem will only increase. More and more businesses are relying on their online presence to generate income—making them vulnerable to attack. As such, a shift in attitude among cyber security professionals will be needed if we're to see this issue eradicated. Security measures must be taken seriously, and they must be implemented before a breach occurs.
