Large sized Indian firms on average lose around $10 million from cyber-attacks and midsized organizations are reported to lose $11 million on average. This has been published by Frost & Sullivan in its recent study which was commissioned by Microsoft.

The cybersecurity attacks have also resulted in job losses in 64% organizations as per the study report conducted in several organizations.

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Brief of the Study: This study was aimed to provide an insight into the Business decision makers and IT executives about the economic cost involved in cybersecurity breaches. It was carried in the organization in the Asia-Pacific region to understand deeply the gaps in the cybersecurity strategies in various organizations.  The study involved a survey of 1300 Businesses and ranged from 250 to 499 employees (mid-sized) and > 500 employees (large) organizations. As per the study, around 3 out of five organizations have suffered around 30% cybersecurity-related incidents.

As per the study, companies now face a greater risk of significant loss of data and can have a very bad reputation due to such attacks.  Market and customer reputation can be seriously affected due to the high-profile breaches which have happened this year. Frost & Sullivan has devised an economic model to calculate the cost of cybercrime. This model is based on the macroeconomic data and the insights which have been shared by the survey respondents. 

Working Theory of the Model: This model considers three kinds of losses that can happen due to a cybersecurity attack. These are direct financial losses, indirect losses such as opportunity cost due to loss of customer satisfaction and bad reputation, and induced losses. Induced losses involve the impact on the broader ecosystem and the economy such as a decrease in consumer spending and organization spending. As per the study, there are other hidden losses involved in the indirect and the induced perspective and these will have a significant impact. Since the traditional IT boundaries are disappearing very fast, it has become easier for the adversaries to find various new targets.

This study has focused also on the current strategy taken by the Indian organizations to counter the threat of the cybersecurity problem. Survey reveals that those organizations which have encountered cybersecurity incidents, data exfiltration, and remote code execution have been the major victim. The lack of such important activities has led to a very slow recovery time for these organizations. There is a large number of cybersecurity tools and the complex environment couples with it to make the recovery more difficult.

Most organizations have poor cybersecurity strategies and the fear of cyber attacks has stalled around 37% of projects scheduled for digital transformation. Only around 37% of the organizations consider the implementation of the proper strategy of cybersecurity for safeguarding the organization against cyber attacks. With the increase of mobile computing and cloud-based activities to enhance customer interactions with the customers, new risks are increasing.

What is a CyberSecurity Threat?

Cybersecurity threats are relentlessly inventive and are a master of disguise and innovation and evolve constantly to find new ways to steal and harm. A few most important form of cybersecurity threat that can paralyze a normal digital working of an organization is discussed here.

Phishing Attacks: Phishing emails are often targeted to the mass market in the form of emails and it tries to obtain significant data related to bank details, etc. Sometimes it is cleverly disguised and deceptively made and becomes difficult to spot and makes easier for the hacker to perform a data breach. Spear phishing is more dangerous as it carries an authentic and trusted look but in reality, can take you to malicious websites. 

Insider Threats: This is an emerging method and is getting very common for several recent data breaches incidents. This internal cybersecurity threats originate from the internal employees of an organization and can be unintentional or intentional. However, in many times the internal threats can be highly malicious and can disrupt the normal functioning of an organization.

DOS: DOS or Denial of Service occurs when more traffic is flooded in a website by the hackers. A website fails to handle a high amount of traffic at the same time, and cause a denial of access to legitimate users. This can cost huge downtime for the employees or for the users also and can lead to a huge opportunity cost lost.

Malware: Malware is the most common cybersecurity threat and it involves multiple forms of harmful software. This harmful software can be executed when mistakenly downloaded and cause a serious threat to the functioning of the computers.

Artificial Intelligence to counter Cybersecurity Threats: Rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence or AI technologies is very heartening news as it can effectively counter the cyber attack related issues. As per the survey report, around 92% of Indian organizations in India are looking for or have implemented AI approach. It effectively helps to boost the cybersecurity in an organization and around 22% of Indian organizations are reported to have benefitted from it.