Understanding the costs of a cyberattack
Over time, the average cost of a cyberattack has increased. Hackers have been reaping greater rewards for their cyberheist work, which has prompted them to develop new tools and techniques to steal more data and money. Many cybersecurity companies have provided estimates of the average cost of cyber attacks in 2017/2018.
This article is a portion of our new book, Hands on Cybersecurity for Finance. This book will teach you how to protect your system from common cyber threats and make sure that your financial services are secure.
This article will explain the various losses that an organization can suffer after a cyberattack.
IBM, a tech giant that makes both software and hardware products, has reported that cybersecurity breaches are now more expensive than ever. It is now $3,860,000. This represents a 6.4% increase over their 2017 estimate. This is 6.4% more than their 2017 estimate. The company estimates that each stolen record containing sensitive information will cost $148. This is an increase of 4.8% over their 2017 estimate. Here is IBM’s 2018 report on cyber breaches:
The global average cost of data breaches is now $3,860,000 million. This is 6.4% more than the previous year. The average cost of each record that is lost or stolen containing sensitive or confidential information has also increased by 4.8% to $148.
Different cyber attacks cost different amounts
Table of Contents
Although it is easy to say that hacks cost on average $3,000,000, this does not necessarily mean that all types of attacks will cost that much. Some attacks are more expensive than others. The frequency of an attack on an organization can also affect the cost. It is important to examine how common cyberattacks affect costs.
Below is Accenture’s graphic representation of the cost of the most frequent attacks, based on their frequency between 2016 and 2017. This data was gathered from 254 companies all over the globe.
Cost of a cybersecurity attack The averages for the most frequent attacks were therefore higher. The graph shows that insider threats are the most costly and frequent threats to an organization.
In 2017, losses from malicious insider attacks averaged $173,516. Insider threats have a lot of information when they carry out attacks. This is why this attack cost is so high. Because they have been working with the victim company for a while, they are familiar with what they should target and which security loopholes they should exploit. This is not a guessing game, but an organized attack with a clear goal and a planned execution.
Accenture’s graph shows that malicious insiders were followed at $129,450 annually by DoS attacks, and then at $112,419.
However, frequency is not taken into account and there are many changes to the report as you can see in the following graphic representation:
Cost of a cybersecurity attackThis graph represents the real world. Malware attacks are the most expensive. An average $2,400,000 per attack results in losses for organizations that are affected by malware. This is due to the existence of an underground market that supports the rapid purchase of new malware as well as the large number of unpatched systems.
Due to the high-skilled black hats who sell their malware on dark web at low prices, malware has also become more sophisticated. Script kiddies have been able to obtain highly effective malware that can be used in attacks. Web-based attacks rank second at $2,000,000, while DoS attack ranks third at $1,565,000 DoS attacks are a