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Are Hackers Costing You Money?
Findings from “The First Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study” were published this week on InfoWorld. The article explains that the study assessed 45 U.S. organizations, and found that cyber crime (web attacks, malicious code, viruses, etc) costs each organization $3.8 million per year, on average.
An average loss of $3.8 million, per organization!
Although these numbers don’t even seem plausible, the mean loss per organization was averaged from a low of $1 million to a high of $52 million. These dollar amounts represent the cost of coping with a cyber attack, not the costs of preventative care.
The Findings
According to the study, the types of cyber crime reported included:
- Stealing Intellectual Property
- Confiscating Online Bank Accounts
- Distributing Viruses/Malware
- Leaking Confidential Business Information
So What Can I Do?
Don’t just assume a firewall and an enterprise level anti-virus system is the solution. Although highly recommended, they are only PART of the safeguards your organization’s IT Services needs to have in place to reduce the susceptibility to cyber attacks.
Your organization SHOULD have a Privacy Policy that dictates how to handle intellectual property as well as how to safeguard confidential information from being leaked.
Your organization can also hire a technician to perform services such as:
- Security Assessment - identifies vulnerabilities in infrastructure.
- Security Audit - installs an application on the network that is designed to identify, classify, secure, monitor and report on sensitive data.
You need to make sure all Information Technology areas in your company are safeguarded to reduce your vulnerability to cyber attacks which will save your organization a lot of money, time, and aggravation.
