Not all publicity is good publicity, especially when it comes to a cyberattack. A cyberattack can hurt your business’ data, reputation, and cost you future sales. Within the first month of 2017 there have already been a multitude of cyberattacks. These victims include businesses just like yours, with headlines reading Lloyds Customers Hit by Cyberattack, Austrian Hotel Forced to Pay Ransom Following Cyberattack, and Cyberattack Shuts Down Sundance Box Offices. These breaches can happen at anytime, and to anyone. The next big data breach is not an if, it’s a when.
How could a data breach really affect your business? In the past year alone, there have been many examples of what a cyberattack can do to a business. Here are just three examples of that damage.
Sony’s Damaged Data
In 2014, Sony pictures experienced a cyberattack. The hackers stole documents, wiped internal datacenters clean, and destroyed 75% of their servers. This massive cyberattack cost the production studio 5 movies not yet released, medical records, social security numbers, salary lists, personal emails and much more. In an article on Computer World, Senior General Manager at Sony, Kazuhiko Takeda said, “The attack cost $35 million in IT repairs, and who knows the amount of lost sales that came from the damage.”
The Damaged Reputation of Opera and Yahoo
When your business handles information such as passwords, login information, and other sensitive data, trust is extremely important. The Hacker News, described this 2016 hack as affecting all users of the sync feature in its web browser. This sync feature allows users to share their browser data and settings across multiple platforms. The hack affected 1.7 million users, leaking their passwords and their authentication passwords.
The widely publicized hack of Yahoo was an even greater example of how these attacks can affect your business. The series of hacks have not only cost them customers, it cost Yahoo $1 billion from an acquisition agreement. Verizon was in the midst of acquiring Yahoo for an agreed upon $4.83 billion but because of the recent security compromises, Verizon is asking for a $1 billion discount.
TalkTalk’s Loss of Future Sales
TalkTalk is a UK company that provides tv, phone, mobile, and internet services. In October of 2015, a cyberattack affected 4% of TalkTalk’s 4 million customers in a raid for personal data. Fortunately, this attack did not cause any financial loss for their customers, despite a partial disclosure of payment details. This small cyberattack cost TalkTalk, according to The Guardian, 101,000 customers. This also affected the new customer gain after the attack, costing them $15 million in their third quarter of business.
Are you concerned yet? You should be. Forbes, named 2017 the Year of Cyber Warfare and yesterday was the best time to start creating your cybersecurity plan. Contact us, using the form below, so we can help you discover solutions that will keep your business safe from cyberattack.
Crossroads Technologies, Inc. 