Table Of Contents
- Cost Of A Cyber Breach: Reputational Damage
- The Impact Of Cyberattacks On Customer Confidence
- Difficulty Attracting New Business
- Falling Behind The Competition
- Operational Disruption
- Fines, Legal Fees, And Recovery Expenses
- Get Into The Preventative Mindset
- The Human Firewall: Why Employee Training Stops Cyberattacks
- Steps To Identify Your Cyber Weaknesses
The True Cost Of A Cyber Breach (It Isn’t Just Financial)
A recent government-commissioned survey confirmed that the average UK business faces costs of up to £195,000 after a cyberattack.
That’s an estimated annual cost of £14.7 billion to the UK economy. Cybersecurity consultants have a tough task protecting companies from the risk of financial ruin.
The impact and cost of a cyber breach, however, damage more than just a business’s balance sheet.
Read on to discover more about the true and seemingly hidden cost of a cyber breach, and how to act now to prevent your company from becoming the next victim.
Cost Of A Cyber Breach: Reputational Damage
One of the highest costs of a cyber breach is the damage to your reputation during and after it.
Consumer trust is vital to a brand’s success, and when a data breach occurs, your customers, partners, and shareholders need more reassurance than ever.
As several brands have shown in recent months, reputational damage and cybercrime go hand in hand.
If customers can’t rest safe in the knowledge that their data is out of harm’s way, whatever the circumstances or cyber threat, you’ll lose them.
The Impact Of Cyberattacks On Customer Confidence
Cyberattacks do more than just stop any business operations. They can also damage the trust between a company and its clients.
Whenever a breach occurs, it can often lead to significant changes in customer confidence.
Thus, people want to know if their data is safe, and a leak proves otherwise.
Difficulty Attracting New Business
Long-term, reputational damage is a major cost of a cyber breach. It could continue to affect customer acquisition. If people stop trusting your brand, they will not buy your services.
The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report revealed that 47% of organisations struggled to attract new customers following a cyberattack in 2024.
Furthermore, potential clients often check a company’s history before signing a contract. As a result, a single mistake can cost you many future deals.
Falling Behind The Competition
The loss of intellectual property could also put you on the back foot. The hackers can easily steal all your secrets and designs for your future plans.
This theft leaves you lagging behind, losing all your unique advantages, and allowing your customers to turn to competitors in search of innovation.
Consequently, while you are busy fixing the breach, your rivals keep moving ahead! In short, cybersecurity can make it much harder for companies to stay ahead in the marketplace.
Operational Disruption
Solving cybersecurity issues and closing the loopholes hackers exploit takes time, the time that would usually be spent running your business.
It should therefore come as no surprise that many businesses experience operational downtime and further lost revenue following a cyber breach.
No brand felt the cost and disruption of operational downtime more than Jaguar Land Rover last year.
The car maker felt the ripples of disruption throughout its operations, with two of its main UK plants halting production and its retail business also badly hit.
Marks & Spencer’s service was another severely impaired by its hugely damaging data breach.
The retailer ceased taking orders via its website and app, and store collections were also paused, returning only 15 weeks later.
M&S estimates that the cyberattack will reduce total profits by approximately £300 million.
Fines, Legal Fees, And Recovery Expenses
There are further costs to bear as a breached business. If acquiring customer data was the hacker’s objection, you may leave your business vulnerable to regulatory fines and lawsuits, each of which carries its own legal fees.
You’ll also need to budget for incident response and recovery costs to get your company back up and running.
Get Into The Preventative Mindset
Don’t wait for a cyber criminal to strike. Take action now to avoid the cost of a cyber breach!
Using a preventative mindset will serve you well as a business owner. This enables you to plan in advance for cross-functional incident response and close any loopholes that could be exploited by hackers.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are also paving the way to better cybersecurity protocols and guaranteeing significant cost savings across the board.
The latest technology can help to design the most effective preventative workflows for your operation.
It’ll identify and address the shortages and skills gaps that turn an already devastating cyber breach into a catastrophic, potentially business-closing event.
Navigating the challenging, ever-evolving, and increasingly hostile digital landscape isn’t easy; what may be relevant today may not be applicable tomorrow.
Yet, by taking proactive steps to build resilient defences before disaster strikes, you can be better positioned to safeguard your business from the latest cyber risks.
The Human Firewall: Why Employee Training Stops Cyberattacks
Employee training is considered to be the most critical part of modern cybersecurity. Humans are often the “weakest link” in a company’s defense.
And if we dig deep into the past cases, we will see that many cyber breaches happen due to simple human mistakes, and they have paid a huge cost of a cyber breach.
In fact, Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report shows, and Stanford University suggests, that a vast majority of breaches involve human error.
Thus, it is necessary to train employees to spot phishing emails.
This way, they would be able to identify which messages are fake and intended to steal passwords.
A good training also teaches them about “cyber hygiene.” This includes using strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
So, by educating the staff, the companies can build a “human firewall.” Instead of being at risk, the trainer employees become a strong line of defense.
They can learn how to recognise suspicious activities at the earliest. Moreover, they will also know how to report them quickly.
This way, it would be easier to stop small mistakes from becoming a major disaster.
Steps To Identify Your Cyber Weaknesses
The companies need to find their weak spots before the hackers can spot them!
- First, they must use a vulnerability scanner. These tools can automatically find bugs in your software.
- Secondly, as an organization, you need to perform penetration testing. This is when the experts try to break in to test all your defenses.
- Additionally, you must check your staff. Send fake phishing emails as a part of employee training. The simulation test can help you to understand if they click on suspicious links.
- You should also audit both your hardware and software lists. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) can offer you free tools to help you!
In short, regular checks can keep your data safe from a wide range of new threats.
You should also audit your hardware and software lists. The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) offers free tools to help. In short, regular checks keep your data safe from new threats.
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