Hidden Costs of Cyber Attacks You May Not Have Considered

The words that no business person or technology manager needs to hear: “There’s been a data breach!”. These chilling words will put the mind into overdrive, attempting to triage the issue before you even realize the full magnitude of this problem. What would be the effect on your business? Is this just a temporary setback, or can the business ever really recover? Finally, how well are you prepared in case this happens to your business? Your degree of preparation may be the most determining factor!

In this article we have highlighted a few of the hidden costs of cyber crime. These secondary costs that result from an attack may include but are not limited to:

Reputational Damage:

A cyber attack can really shame a brand. As a result, businesses may lose clients (or experience difficulty attracting new ones) resulting in lost revenue to the brand. Cybersecurity consultants and computer forensics firms, like ARCITECHX, can be hired to find out how an attack occurred, and new solutions can be implemented to plug the holes through which access to the network was gained. Regaining the trust of customers can be much harder to recover from. Once trust in a brand is lost, some customers will leave and never return.

Loss of Intellectual Property:

Intellectual property (IP) is the lifeblood of every highly competitive business, but it was not always that way. Today more than ever, it’s the target, put squarely in the cross-hairs by many different forms of cyber attacks. To name one example of Hollywood & the entertainment industry’s more public IP attacks include HBO’s “ Game of Thrones. ” Your company’s IP, whether that’s patents, trade secrets or just employee know-how, could be more important than its tangible possessions.  

Operational Disruption or Destruction:

The impact of operational disturbance or destruction can be a large variable in the category of expenses. Operational disruption or destruction could involve losses connected with manipulating or altering ordinary company activities and expenses, connected with the reconstruction of operational capacities. This could include repairing machinery and facilities, building temporary infrastructure, diverting funds from one portion of the company to another, or increasing existing funds to assist alternative company activities to replace the function of temporarily shut down systems. It may also include losses related to the failure to supply products or services. The nature of operational disruption — and thus the suitable process of calculating its impact— is very particular to each scenario and involves immediate understanding of a number of separate parts of data.

What can you do to protect yourself?

One popular solution is outsourcing. Outsourcing to a company like ARCITECHX is one option for smaller businesses in particular. Outsourcing cyber security may be an efficient means to increase preparation, and preparation is everything. Employing a consultant will result in lower costs and a quicker ramp up of your cyber system. Employees should still be informed and engaged in the process of protecting the company’s information but an outside firm can lend that expertise every company needs to keep our data safe.