The Cost of a Data Breach
Imagine how scared and disoriented you would feel if you came home one day to find out that your house had been burglarized; at first, it is hard to tell what the burglars stole, because all of the possessions that are still there are not in their usual place. Your first task is to find out what is missing; this is one of the things the police will ask you if you report the crime. After that, you will start to think about how the burglary happened and what you can do to stop it from happening again, such as changing the locks on your door or installing surveillance cameras on your property. You go through a similar thought process if hackers breach your company’s computer network and steal customers’ data. Surveying the financial cost of a data breach at your company is just the beginning. The next step is to contact the New York cybersecurity consultants at Perspective Omni Media to prevent another cyberattack from happening.
Financial Losses Resulting from Data Breaches
According to a report by Ponemon Institute and IBM Security, the costs a company incurs as a result of a data breach fall into several categories. The most expensive part is detecting and escalating threats to the company’s data security. Almost as costly are the company’s expenses related to post-breach response, such as containing the threat and investing in patches and other cybersecurity measures to prevent future attacks. It also costs money to notify clients and other parties whose data may have been compromised in the breach. Finally, companies lose money as a result of data breaches because, in order to put resources toward dealing with the data breach, they must divert resources away from other, more profitable business activities.
2021 Was a Perfect Storm for Corporate Data Breaches
According to the same report, 2021 was an especially bad year for corporate data breaches. In fact, the cost of data breaches in 2021 was 10 percent higher than it was in 2019. A factor that contributed to the increase in data breaches was that many companies hastily transitioned to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic and, with employees accessing the companies’ computer networks from so many locations, the computer networks were vulnerable to attack. Healthcare was the industry most severely affected by data breaches during the pandemic. The more a company relied on cloud storage of its data, the less vulnerable it was to data breaches.
The Non-Financial Costs of a Data Breach
Even more destructive than the financial costs of a data breach is the damage that the data breach does to the company’s reputation. Rebuilding customers’ trust after you have left them vulnerable to identity theft is even more challenging than containing a cyberattack.
Protect Your Data and Your Reputation
Cyberattacks are even more costly than you can tell just by looking at the number of files compromised. Contact Perspective Omni Media in Iselin, New Jersey, about protecting your company from financially ruinous data breaches.