Preventing cyber attacks to avoid economic and financial consequences

In 2022, French organizations fell victim to 385,000 successful cyber attacks. In addition to disrupting the activities of private and public organizations, these malicious acts cause colossal financial damage, with losses estimated at around €2 billion in 2022. 

What is the breakdown of the financial cost of a cyber attack? What preventive measures can be taken to limit risks?
 

Direct and indirect costs of a cyber attack

The average cost of a cyber attack is €59,000. This amount includes: 

• Immediate financial costs: The priority for an organization that incurred a cyber attack is to restore its IT system. This recovery process requires the intervention of external service providers, as does the restoration of data damaged or deleted during the attack. On the other hand, it is important to engage cyber security experts to understand the origin of the attack and adopt appropriate protective measures to prevent this type of incident from happening again.
  
   
• Business slowdown or interruption: Certain attacks, such as ransomware, completely paralyze their victim's computer system. Organizations that depend directly on their digital activity, such as an e-commerce website, are unable to generate revenue until their website is restored. In any case, a cyber attack often has a major impact on the productivity of employees, whether by making certain data inaccessible, or by affecting the network or their workstations.
  
   
• Damage to brand image: A cyber attack can unfortunately damage an organization's reputation and deteriorate the trust of its business partners as well as its customers. This climate of mistrust can even drive customers away, resulting in long-term loss of revenue.
  
   
• Legal and regulatory consequences: Unfortunately, cyber criminals often carry out their attacks by taking advantage of their victim's non-compliance with current cyber security regulatory standards. In such cases, the organization is held legally responsible, and can face heavy fines.

Investing in prevention to minimize risk: 

Several measures can be taken to reduce your organization's exposure to cyber threats and limit the consequences of a cyber attack:

• Adopting advanced cybersecurity solutions: Deploying an EDR (Endpoint detection and response) or XDR (eXtended Detection Response) solution can detect and block a large number of threats: zero-day vulnerabilities, ransomware, malware, stealth threats... This proactive "threat hunting" approach is essential to effectively anticipate and counter cyber attacks.
  
   
• Training and raising employee awareness: Clicking on an infected attachment, installing non-approved applications... employees are sometimes, unknowingly, the trigger for a cyber attack. It is crucial to instill best practices and internal rules. A security-conscious corporate culture drastically reduces the risk of exposure to malicious acts.
  
   
• Anticipating crisis management: Having guidelines and processes to follow in the event of an attack allows you to be both more responsive and avoid panic. A reference document should therefore be prepared, with clear instructions and emergency contact details. This proactive approach can significantly reduce system recovery times, prevent the spread of an attack and minimize data loss.

At a time when cyber crime is generating ever-increasing costs for organizations, even forcing some organizations out of business, cyber security has become a strategic issue for their long-term survival. But beyond reducing the risks and damages caused by cyber attacks, cyber security is now a genuine competitive advantage, boosting customer confidence and providing an additional selling point in many industries where security is a concern.