Personal information is currency

Cybercrime is a multibillion-dollar industry. In 2020 losses from cybercrime are estimated to have reached almost $1 trillion. It is not only huge companies, with big ransomware demands, covered in news, that have suffered. The small and micro businesses have been affected as well.

When personal information is stolen, it is then sold for a tidy profit. It is not difficult to set up a phishing scam and sell gathered data (thousands of them are available for sale every day), which can be used to create scripts to break into different websites across the internet (including your bank account). The phishing scams generate thousands of leads of which certain percentage pays out. Considering the quantity of data gathered (it is not a matter of quality in this case) even a relatively small amount of money counts. The more they gather the more money they can acquire, and that is what they are after. If they find easy access, they will take it. They don’t care about political agendas or humane reasons. All they see is easy money.

It is not only money that causes loss for companies affected by cybercrime. It is the loss of time. The average ransomware attack causes work interruption for 18 hours, which may have serious consequences in productivity and lost opportunities. Business interruption cost can be anywhere from 5 to 100 times larger than the cost of ransom itself. That’s why many companies elect to pay the ransom. Many times, there can be also a residual cost of such attack in loss of clients who become reluctant to do business with a company that has suffered a security breach.

Therefore, it is so important to protect oneself from hacking of ours and our clients’ personal information. It has been estimated that cost of protection is on average 15 times smaller than the cost of fallout from a cyber-attack. So, if your company has not done their IT security audit for more than a year, schedule it with your friendly IT company now. If you have any questions on online security, feel free to contact us.

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