Ransomware is malicious software created by cybercriminals to extort large sums of money from businesses and organizations. Although ransomware attacks can have devastating financial costs, the impact of a successful attack can be even more costly in terms of time, resources, and reputation.
In this blog post, we will discuss six horrific costs associated with ransomware attacks.
- Exorbitant Payouts: Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are particularly vulnerable to ransomware attacks. On average, SMBs pay out $111,605 in ransom demands when attacked—about four times higher than the average cost for larger organizations.
- Your Reputation: A successful ransomware attack can cause severe damage to your organization’s reputation. Your customers may not trust you if they feel that their data is not secure. Even if you pay the ransom demand and regain access to your data, clients may still choose to take their business elsewhere if they no longer believe that your organization can protect their information.
- Customer Loss: As mentioned above, customer loss can directly result from a successful ransomware attack, which means that even after recovering from a ransomware attack and paying any associated fees, organizations may still suffer financially due to lost customers and revenue streams.
- Business Downtime & Lost Business: Businesses affected by ransomware often have difficulty operating at total capacity while their systems are offline or compromised by malware. This downtime can lead to lost business opportunities as potential customers turn away due to an inability to access services or products quickly enough. In addition, businesses affected by a ransomware attack may also incur additional costs related to cleaning up infected systems and ensuring all data has been fully recovered before operations resume as usual.
- Skyrocketing Insurance Premiums: If your organization has been attacked by ransomware before, there’s an 80% greater chance that it will happen again, according to Office Tech Insider. This means that insurance companies view organizations with prior ransomware experience as at high risk for future attacks and charge significantly higher premiums than those who have never been attacked.
- Inability to Qualify for a Loan: Small businesses striving to obtain loans or mortgages are in a particularly vulnerable position; if they were subject to ransomware, their financial stability could be significantly compromised and jeopardize their chances of gaining the required funding. As banks base decisions of loan provisions on the data collected from companies, any disruption this causes is incredibly serious – leaving small business owners at risk should malicious actors succeed in compromising their system security.
Ransomware attacks come with devastating financial costs but also have long-lasting effects on an organization’s reputation and ability to operate effectively making them one of the most alarming cyber threats today. To protect yourself from these horrific costs, be sure your business has robust backup and disaster recovery solutions in place, so you don’t become another victim of this malicious software!
About hubTGI
hubTGI is a Canadian-owned Managed Services provider that offers Print Services, Workflow Solutions, Managed IT, Cybersecurity Solutions, Cloud Services and VoIP to help their customers control costs, secure their data and make their people more productive.
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