Scattered purple and green bags of money.

The Cost of a Cyber Attack: A Frighteningly Expensive Reality

Cyber crime can be very costly. Not only can it cost tens of thousands of dollars to amend, but the damage can cost businesses a lot of time. And as we all know, time is money.

Your time and attention are crucial to your business’s success.

If a criminal shuts down your network, you can miss out on major business opportunities. While that seems obvious, what you may not realize is how long a situation like this can take to resolve.

The mean number of days it takes to resolve a cyber attack is 46. Repeat: 46 days. That’s a month and a half!

It will not only hurt your bank account but also your reputation.

Reputational damage can be very expensive. A data breach may cause you to lose customers, whether or not they were affected by the breach. In fact, 76% of people say they would move away from a company with a data breach history.

Hackers suck.

Hackers and malware can affect any computer on your network–and they add up to 45% of cyber claims. And if a hacker gains access to valuable items such as customer lists or business trade secrets, you can count on them taking advantage.

From there, you’ll need to consider crisis services like forensics, which is used to find out how your system was hacked. This type of work amounts to 78% of all cyber claim costs.

There’s more?

You’ll have to pay for all of your clients’ credit monitoring services if hackers access sensitive information. The cost of this service runs to about $10 per victim. If you have 300 clients, you’ll have to find $3,000 for credit monitoring alone.

And if that doesn’t sound costly enough, you’ll also need to account for potential lawsuits arising from customer data being compromised.

Get Cyber Liability Insurance
Get Cyber Liability Insurance

Don’t think this article applies to you?

Like those in the Hunger Games arena, the odds are unfortunately stacked against you. According to the Ponemon Institute, 55% of small business owners experience at least one data breach, leaving 72% of all businesses unable to fully restore their company’s data.

While you’re great at what you do, you can’t be an expert at everything.

And even if you’ve taken the right steps to protect your cyber assets, the internet and all its weirdos are surely out of your control.

Something that you can do proactively to ensure that your business, self, and clients are protected, though, is to get cyber liability insurance. This type of insurance will cover things like customer notification, forensics investigation, identity theft, and credit monitoring (among other things).

Interested in learning more?

Learn more about cyber liability insurance. Already know that cyber liability is a good fit for your business? Get an online cyber liability quote.

Pogo is an online business insurance agency dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and the self-employed get the right insurance, easily.
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