According to the US Government, “In just two minutes, a fire can become life-threatening. In five minutes, a residence can be engulfed in flames¹”. Did you know that ransomware can start encrypting files in less than 20 seconds²? Did you know that virtually no company is immune to severe exploits? In fact, our partners at Fortinet detected that 96% of firms have experienced at least one severe exploit³. Don’t leave your business open to cyber threats. You can’t buy a house without hazard insurance so why run a business without a cyber security program?
The comparison
While data breaches aren’t fatal, they can be incredibly costly. There have been over 600 data breaches so far this year, at an average cost of $7.9M per breach.
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How to prevent a cyber attack
Unlike a blaze, a cyber threat can be hard to detect so advanced threat detection and prevention are imperative. That’s why you need a trusted partner who knows what to look for. Some measures that ADKtechs provides that can decrease the costly impact of a data breach include:
- An incident response team
- Encryption
- Employee training
- Security analytics
We truly believe that the best defense is a good offense which is why we deploy this three-step methodology in helping our customers fend off cyber threats:
Not only is the threat landscape constantly evolving, but so are the compliance policies that government and industry agencies enact to combat them. So it’s important to be aware of top threats (shown below⁶) and implement preventative techniques that are a dynamic process so we work with our customers to make adjustments and reassess their business as new threats arise.
The cost of a cyber attack
The Ponemon Institute’s 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study⁴, shows that the costs associated with a cyber attack or data breach range from:
Detection and escalation:
Activities that enable a company to detect and report the breach to appropriate personnel within a specified time period. Examples include forensic and investigative activities, assessment and audit services, crisis team management, & communications to executive management and board of directors.
Post data breach response:
Processes set up to help individuals or customers affected by the breach to communicate with the company, as well as costs associated with redress activities and reparation with data subjects and regulators. Examples include help desk activities/inbound communications, credit report monitoring and identity protection services, issuing new accounts or credit cards, legal expenditures, product discounts, & regulatory fines.
Notification costs:
Activities that enable the company to notify individuals who had data compromised in the breach (data subjects) as regulatory activities and communications. Examples include emails, letters, outbound telephone calls, or general notice that personal information was lost or stolen, communication with regulators, determination of all regulatory requirements, & engagement of outside experts.
Lost business cost:
Activities associated with cost of lost business including customer churn, business disruption, and system downtime. Examples include cost of business disruption and revenue losses from system downtime, cost of lost customers and acquiring new customers, & reputation losses and diminished goodwill.
What to do after a cyber attack
Average post-data breach response costs are over $1M and lost business costs can skyrocket to over $4M per breach. The steps you need to take to help mitigate these costs are:
Detect and contain the problem:
The sooner the better. Once you’ve identified the breach be sure to gather as much information you can on when it took place, how it will impact your customers, what assets were affected, and what type of attack it was. ADKtechs can help you assess your problem, come up with a plan to make sure it never happens again, and get you back on your feet.
Tell your customers:
This may be an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s important. Assure them that you will be taking measures moving forward to prevent any further breaches. Customer loss after a cyber security incident is inevitable, but being proactive and honest with your customers may help limit some of these losses.
Prevent future events:
Having a security expert on your side is key to recovery. Our full managed security offering covers all the bases when it comes to preventing a future data breach:
Risk assessment report Security policies and procedures Threats analysis / risk determination $100,000 financial protection & breach response services Employee security training Web content filtering & web security On-demand employee training Complete system monitoring Service provider tracking Hardware/software inventory Security incident module Bandwidth usage tracking Disaster recovery plan Application & hardware change notification Contracts and document storage Software license management Monthly employee security newsletter Desktop policy enforcement Simulated phishing attack platform IT security policy creation 
Find a good lawyer:
It’s not uncommon for customers whose personal information has been compromised to sue the responsible company. Hopefully this won’t happen to you, but just in case it does, it’s important to invest in some legal help to guide you.
Don't risk it all.
Not protecting your business against cyber threats is like not having insurance. It’s not worth it.
