The True Cost of Cybercrime and How to Protect Your Business​​

Cybercrime is one of the most important threats facing businesses today. Experts estimate that cybercrime will cost $10.5 trillion annually for the world. Every business is likely to be impacted unless it takes proactive steps to block and mitigate cybercrimes.

While the focus is largely on data breaches and stolen passwords, the true cost can run much deeper. In this article, we will take a detailed look at how cybercrimes can impact your business and how you can get protection from them.

What is the meaning of cybercrime?

A simple meaning of cybercrime is the criminal activities carried out in the digital world that can impact individuals, companies, and even governments. Often, people associate cybercrimes with just data stealing through compromised passwords. Though hacking and data breaches are the most visible kinds of cybercrime, the true costs extend deeper, as they include financial fraud, identity theft, cyberstalking, ransomware attacks, and more. Speakers like Alexis Conran can throw more light on cybercrime in the real and virtual world.

What makes these crimes particularly dangerous is that they can be carried out from any part of the world and by anyone with advanced technological tools and cybersecurity knowledge.

Types of cybercrime

Now that you know the meaning of cybercrime, you must protect your business from it. However, this is not easy, and a good first step is to understand the cybercrime types that can impact your organization. Some of them are:

• Phishing - These fraudulent emails look and sound authentic enough to lure users to provide sensitive information like bank details and other personal and financial data.
• Ransomware - Malicious software that infects your system and encrypts your important files. The decryption code to access these files again is given after you pay the demanded ransom.
• Denial of Service (DoS) - This is a type of attack where a hacker sends millions of requests to your server to drain its resources and capabilities. As a result, it goes down.
• Insider threats - This is the most difficult of all cybercrimes, as employees with privileged access steal sensitive data and send it to those who will misuse the data.
• Hacking - Misusing a website or digital resource to spread misinformation, hate, etc.
• Identity theft - Stealing others’ information and using it to impersonate them.

Each of these threats has a different modus operandi and comes with associated costs. Cybersecurity experts like FC aka Freaky Clown can help understand these cybercrimes better, so you can know what to watch out for.

Impact of cybercrimes

The cybercrime degree can vary based on how much damage it causes to organizations. Based on costs and impact, cybercrimes can be:

• Low degree: This includes minor phishing scams or those that are isolated early. Though there is some damage, it is minimal and can be rectified right away.
• Moderate degree: This includes targeted crimes like targeted phishing emails with relevant context and data leaks or breaches. These have a moderate financial impact and can attract the attention of regulatory authorities.
• High degree: These are large-scale attacks like DoS, ransomware, or data breaches involving millions of records. Such crimes lead to high financial losses, regulatory fines, and even long-term reputational damage.

Next, let’s look at the possible costs of cybercrime.

Cost of cybercrime

Different kinds of cybercrime cause varying losses. Experts like Chani Simms can help you better understand the true cost of a cybercrime. Some of the business impacts of cybercrime are:

• Direct financial losses - These include payments made to ransomware attackers, theft of funds, loss of business, and costs of fixing the vulnerabilities. Note that the average cost of a cybercrime is $4.88 million.
• Downtime - When systems go down, employees are unable to work. As a result, their productivity goes down, resulting in an indirect loss to the organization.
• Compliance - Regulatory authorities can impose fines if a cybercrime has occurred due to negligence or overlooked security flaws. There can also be associated legal costs.
• Loss of intellectual property - If your patented information is stolen through insider malpractice or hacking, it can lead to the loss of millions of dollars. At the same time, your competitors gain an unfair advantage.
• Reputational damage - A cybercrime reflects poorly on your organisation’s security posture and can erode the trust of customers, investors, and other stakeholders. It can take many years to rebuild this trust.
• Business closure -  Some small businesses never recover from a cybercrime and close down their operations. It is estimated that 60% of small businesses go out of business within six months.

As you can see, the true cost of cybercrime goes beyond the visible financial loss and can have a profound impact on the continuity and operations of your business. To avoid these repercussions, understand the future of technology and how you can stay protected.

Cybercrime and cybersecurity

To safeguard your business from these cybercrimes and their ensuing losses, you can take some cybersecurity measures, which can include the following.

• Since most cybercrimes start with human error, educate your employees.
• Conduct regular training for employees and even hire cyber security expert speakers to talk about their personal experiences and cybersecurity incidents to help employees understand its importance.
• Update your software regularly, as outdated software acts as the entry point for hackers to enter your network.
• Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to restrict access to sensitive information.
• Encrypt data when it is stored and transmitted.
• Regularly back up your critical data.
• Create and implement an incident response plan, so every employee knows what to do in the event of an attack.
• Implement a security policy that includes guidelines on the strength of passwords, frequency of change, etc. Implement a password manager where possible.
• Stay on top of your compliance requirements and conduct regular audits as needed.
• Leverage the expertise of cybersecurity experts like Ben Owen, who can help formulate the right policies for

These measures can improve your security and reduce the chances of a cybercrime and the costs that come with it.

Conclusion

To conclude, cybercrimes are common, and unfortunately, also expensive. Knowing the types of cybercrime and how they can impact your organisation is the first step to protecting your business. We hope the above pointers help you get started in the right direction. To learn more about cybercrimes, their impact on your organization, and how you can safeguard from them, tap into the knowledge of experts at Speaker Agency, who can guide you in the right direction.