Cybercrime costs increase to damage business reputation

The survey involved 2,500 business in 36 economies worldwide, and it explores the damages done to companies as well as kinds of attacks currently impacting businesses.

Results show that loss of reputation was the primary cited impact of a cyber-attack by 29% of respondents. Management time takes the second spot, cited by 26% of respondents, while 16.4% of respondents say that it results in customer loss or churn. Clean-up costs are cited by 12% as the primary impact, while direct loss of turnover takes the fifth position. A loss of competitiveness and changing behaviour change are the least cited, at 3.6% and 3.1% respectively.

In terms of the most common cyber-attacks to affect the region, different regions have considerably different profiles. Africa, for example, predominantly incurs ‘monetary theft’, at around 31% of attacks, the APAC region commonly contends with IP theft’, as cited by 30.2%. Eastern Europe and Western Europe predominantly suffer ‘damage to infrastructure’, at 41.5% and 31.4% respectively. Latin America tends to incur attacks on ‘critical business information’.

Extortion too is on the rise, with 95% of companies still falling prey to poor training and practices of staff. According to analysis by the company – as well as wider industry analysis – he infiltration tends to stem from bad habits from key employees, all the way up to the top of businesses.