Cybercriminal, How Much Do You Cost Me?

It may not seem so. Consider that until 2010 the average cost for each breached record was 200 dollars. Since then the figure has started to fall, but not for everyone: 194 dollars on average, while companies with a security plan reduced it by more than 20%, to 160 dollars.

Visible Costs and Hidden Costs

Human nature tends to overestimate immediate costs, the money to be paid right away, while neglecting opportunity costs and future earnings that are lost.

IT security is no exception: it is not only about restoring the site. The real cost is money the owner will never see, perhaps hard to quantify, but no less heavy for the company's balance sheet:

Opportunity cost: the market is ruthless, and the web even more so. A person who finds a closed shop may come back the next day; someone who finds a “closed” website is somewhere else after ten seconds, perhaps leaving your page forever.

Image cost: In-Bound Marketing, SEO Optimization, Trust-Based Marketing. You tolerated the unbearable English of web communication to build an image of reliability and seriousness with customers, spending time and money. Well, an unavailable site can destroy that effort in one afternoon.

Legal costs: a company often handles confidential data or is responsible for the successful completion of someone else's work. Unless you are lawyers, you will not enjoy learning about the latest trend from America: suing the company that suffered a cyberattack for having “allowed” attackers to access its data.

You have probably already thought about the direct costs, in terms of restoring operations, that a cyberattack could cause you. But are you sure you have quantified the “hidden” costs too? The lost earnings, those costs that are not seen immediately but weigh more at year end?