Hey Brother – Can You Spare $7 Trillion? Some Sleep-Robbing Statistics About Cybercrime

 

I just had a shocking experience! I was reading an article today reporting that businesses are facing a $7 Trillion loss in 2018 due to cybercrime. This is what Forbes said in their article, “The True Cost Of Cybercrime For Businesses.”

I knew that companies were losing money due to ransomware and hackers accessing their financial accounts, but $7 Trillion?

That’s one-third of the national debt!

(Wow, that’s another frightening thought!)

And – Did You Know That Cybercrime Costs The Average Business $15 Million A Year?

While you’re busy running and growing your business, working hard to make money, cybercriminals are finding new and more sophisticated ways to steal it. They want to breach your IT system to steal your confidential data so they can hold your data for ransom, or get passwords and IDs to take cash directly from your bank accounts.

I’m sure you know and have heard about these security breaches. But did you know that (according to a new report from IBM and the Ponemon Institute hacking attacks cost the average U.S. business $15 Million a year!

And this amount only accounts for the direct cost of a breach. The true costs are even greater!

These Aren’t Just Large Businesses

You may be thinking that only large enterprises get hit. Sorry, you’re wrong!

Thieves are now targeting small and mid-sized businesses because they’re easier to hack. That means if you own or manage one of these, you’re in their “bull’s eye.”

Here’s something else that will keep you awake: Cybercrime Is Big Business

It is now equal to the level of industrial corporations. And it’s led by start-up entrepreneurs who provide criminals with the technology, infrastructures, hosting services, payoffs, and everything else they need to set up their own businesses.

Sophisticated hacking tools and strategies that were once only used by nation states like Russia and China are now being used by everyday criminal hackers. And they’re starting up their own private, criminal enterprises.

What The FBI Says

On May 7, 2018, the FBI released the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2017 Internet Crime Report, which highlights trending Internet scams.

Here’s what it says.

In 2017, we lost:

• Over $676 Million due to Business Email Compromise and Email Account Compromise. BEC and EAC are constantly evolving as scammers become more sophisticated.
• Over $60 Million due to corporate data breaches where confidential data is transmitted, viewed, stolen, copied, or used by an unauthorized individual.
• Over $29 Million due to Phishing/Vishing/Smishing/ Pharming. These are unsolicited emails, text messages, and telephone calls purportedly from a legitimate company requesting personal, financial, and/or login credentials.
• Over $2 Million from Ransomware, a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until money is paid.
• Over $5 Million from Malware/Scareware. This is software that can damage or disable computers and IT systems.

The list goes on and on. Read it for yourself when you have time.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like things will improve anytime soon.

Cybercrime damage costs are expected to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021. 

So What’s The Answer?

Obviously, you must protect your business. What’s the best way to do this? There are a number of ways.

You can read the NIST report at https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/hb/2017/NIST.HB.162.pdf and try to implement all of these things yourself. Or you can contact us, and we’ll take care of everything.

Here are some of the things we can do to keep your data and business safe:

• A bundled security offering encompassing an anti-virus solution, intrusion prevention firewall, data encryption, email and web protection, and integrity monitoring.
• Security that promotes extensive visibility, increased compliance, rapid response, and the ability to manage vulnerabilities and cyber threats across your entire enterprise.
• Solutions to help you comply with HIPAA, SOX, FFIEC, FISMA, PCI or DSS, and many other regulations.
• Mobile Device Monitoring with security for your mobile devices and support for your BYOD (bring your own device) policy so your workforce can take advantage of mobility and flexibility without security worries.
• Protection for your PCs, laptops, tablets, servers, and other computer devices such as point-of-sale machines, using continuous cloud-based updates.
• Remote monitoring and management of your network and computers to detect intrusions and block them before criminals can steal your data.
• Tailoring to meet your business’s unique requirements and ensure that today’s and tomorrow’s cyber threats don’t go undetected.
• Security risk assessments to assess and identify vulnerabilities and modify your overall security posture.
• Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking to reveal how effective your security measures are.
• Security Awareness Training to educate your staff on security awareness which is crucial to your data privacy. (For some organizations, this is required in order to comply with federal and state regulations.)
• An enterprise, cloud-based Backup and Disaster-Recovery Service, so your data is always secure and retrievable. We’ll perform hourly backups to a remote location without human intervention, with logging and alerting that notifies us of not just failures, but the absence of successes. This is a very important distinction.
• Audit trails that record who accessed your information, what changes were made, and when.

As you can see, there’s a lot you can do. You don’t have to be a helpless victim.

I hope this will help you sleep better tonight.

But remember, if you think hackers aren’t after your business data and money, think again. They’re working at it as we speak. On second thought, you’d better take a sleep aid tonight … sorry.

Contact Us

If you’d like to learn more about how Globalquest Solutions can protect your business from the growing number of global cyber-attacks, please contact us. We have the tools, resources, and expertise to stop attacks from occurring and ensure that your data and computer assets are safe and secure. Call (716) 601-3524 or email info@globalquestinc.com.