Data Breach – 4 Hits To Your Bottom Line – Are You At Risk?

Cyber Security

There is a strong possibility your business could suffer from a data breach. With 30,000 websites hacked every day and such big profile names mentioned in the past, including Sony and Ashley Madison, you might be mistaken to think that it is mostly large organizations that are targeted.

However, this isn’t the case as 72% of all data breaches occur in small companies. Also, just under half (44%) of small businesses have suffered from a data breach. The frequency of data breaches is so common that most small business leaders are concerned with the potential risk.

On average, a breach costs $8,700 to repair the damage. So, you would think that most businesses would have data breach insurance. However, 65% of businesses don’t.

How Could a Data Breach Impact Your Bottom Line?

There are four ways a data breach can financially impact your business. These are:

Lawsuits: you could be sued by clients if their data is stolen and used by criminals, and their security is compromised.

Site repair costs: when a breach has happened, you need to repair any security issues that enabled the breach to happen.

PR and advertising: a breach can damage your reputation, and you will need to repair your image.

Lost revenue: if you can’t repair your business’ image, confidence in your business can be shaken, customers will abandon you and this will lose you future revenue.

How Can A Breach Happen?

There are numerous ways a data breach can happen, including:

• A member of staff opening an email attachment that contains a virus which disrupts your office equipment.
• A rogue employee stealing information from your system.
• A virus disrupting your company website and it needing to be rebuilt.
• A hacker finding a security flaw in your website or computer system. Hackers often target smaller companies as they have less protection than larger organizations.

Protect Your Business

Whatever you think the risk of a data breach is, it is not worth the financial trouble your business could be in if it happened to you. Therefore, you should always make sure that you have insurance you can rely on to protect you financially should the worst happen.

Have you suffered from a data breach? What was the financial result?

Let us know in the comments below.