The impact of cybercrime for a small business is staggering and can leave an organization in financial ruin if it falls victim to such a calamity. Unfortunately, there is no fool proof way to fully prevent a cyber attack or data breach these days since cybercriminals are always improving the way that they get away with their crimes. Here are a few facts about cybercrime that will put this crime into perspective for you as a small business owner.
The only way someone would involve themselves in this “cybercrime industry” is if it were of financial benefit to them. Well, in 2018, a cybercrime report was released where it is estimated that in the year of 2018 alone, cybercriminals made over $1.5 trillion, and the company that performed the analysis, Bromium and McGuire, claims that is a very conservative number. If cybercrime were a country, based on GDP, they would rank thirteenth in the world, just above Australia.
Criminals will use any means necessary to get the information they are looking for. When it comes to attacking small businesses, the most common type of infiltration technique is a phishing attack. Over 85% of organizations have reported that they have experienced phishing or social engineering attacks in 2019. Accenture reports in its “The Cost of Cybercrime” report that the number of phishing and social engineering attacks has increased 16% from last year.
Although phishing attacks are the most common type of attack, the most costly type of attack on an organization is a malware attack. According to “The Cost of Cybercrime”, the average cost of a malware attack on an organization is $2,613,952 which is an 11% increase from the year before, and the cost with only continue to go up.
It’s clear that many companies are moving their data from traditional storage to cloud-based storage. Due to this data storage migration, it is estimated that the amount of data stored on the cloud will increase by one-hundred times by the year 2021. Because of this, there is more of a threat to companies both large and small of a data breach, and the fact is that when a company has handed over its information, that data is no longer under the company’s control. It’s scary to think about a data breach of just one single cloud server and how much personal information could be leaked.
With that increase of cloud-based storage, it is also predicted that data breaches will increase by nearly seventy percent by the year 2024. That will increase the costs of data breaches from $3 trillion to over $5 trillion in four years. Cybercrime is one of the fastest growing industries, and businesses need to take the steps now to limit their exposure as the threat is ever increasing.
LibertyID is the leader in identity theft restoration, having restored the identities of tens of thousands of individuals without fail. If you retain personal information on your customers, now it is the time to get data breach planning and a response program in place with our LibertyID for Small Business data breach preparation program. With LibertyID Enterprise you can now add value to existing products, services, or relationships by covering your customers, employees, or members with LibertyID’s fully managed identity theft restoration service—at a fraction of our retail price—with no enrollment and no file sharing. We have no direct communication with your group members–until they need us.
Call us now for a no obligation proposal at 844-411-LIBERTY (844-411-5423).