Most businesses have found themselves at the receiving end of a cyber attack, but most people don’t realize how hard data security breaches hit companies’ pocketbooks.
That’s according to the director of intellectual property and innovation policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Scott Smith, who says that when it comes to how much breaches actually cost we’re looking at, on average, in excess of $200 per record stolen.
“That is to cover things like monitoring people’s credit after the fact. It doesn’t include things like what it costs to brand reputation,” says Smith. “So companies that have been breached, what do they suffer in terms of lost business down the road.”
Smith says the investments required for cybersecurity are probably significantly less than what the resulting costs would be from an attack.
Target, for example, agreed to settlements with U.S. banks, Visa and customers in a federal class action lawsuits totalling well over $100-million after their massive breach back in 2013.
According to Smith, businesses could be potentially losing billions of dollars to attacks from cybercriminals and not even know it. The median number that a threat can reside on a network is 204 days before anyone even realizes that it’s there.
“In that close to a year, it’s pretty easy for the bad guys to be able to steal information, personal information, credit card information, most importantly intellectual property that is just going out the door and the company that thinks they’re protected doesn’t even know it’s happening,” says Smith.
He says very often those threats aren’t even picked up by local information technology staff, law enforcement or other agencies are the ones giving companies the heads up.
