In the blink of an eye, what seems like a perfect day for your business can turn into a disaster. The storm you never saw coming hits- your business falls victim to a cyberattack. Like a tornado, a cyberattack can do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. After disaster hits, employees are rushing to secure your client’s data; using all their energy to try to contain the problem instead of focusing on the bigger picture, producing for your clients. Even a few hours of downtime can cost thousands of dollars in productivity and lost revenue for a business. Here’s how to calculate the cost of downtime due to a data breach.
Common Causes of Unplanned Downtime
Some common causes of downtime for small businesses include:
- Server Failures
- Network Outages
- Ransomware
- Phishing
- Denial of Service Attacks
How Can You Minimize Downtime Costs?
It’s possible to minimize downtime costs through strategic planning and prevention. Many organizations craft disaster recovery and incident response plans to avoid having a cyber attack put them out of business.
Some strategies to minimize downtime cost include:
- Develop and test an Incident Response plan
- Develop and test a disaster recovery plan
- Us a backup system for all servers, files, databases, and email systems that can be spun up instantly in the event of an outage
- Eliminate single points of failure in your network
- Know your recovery time objective
- Know your recovery point objective
- Conduct a network security assessment
- Test your security plan
Data Breach Costs During Business Downtime
Loss of Revenue
Unfortunately, there is no single way to avoid losing revenue when your business is down due to a data breach. For every minute your business is down, more potential revenue is lost. During business downtime, employees are in defense mode attempting to recover lost data and files, and generating revenue is not a priority.
Loss of Opportunity
Don’t blink- you might miss out on an important opportunity for your business. When your business is experiencing downtime, it’s like walking around with your eyes closed. That big client you’ve been waiting for may not be able to reach you during a security breach.
Loss of Productivity
Keeping employees productive is something organizations spend a generous amount of time and money on. For many SMBs, it’s well worth the investment to have your employees functioning at full productivity to avoid slow growth in your company. During business downtime, having a non-functioning network puts a halt on productivity and instead directs time and money towards recovery. You can minimize the loss of productivity by:
- Prioritizing cyber security awareness among employees
- Having a robust Incident Response plan
- Having a robust disaster recovery plan
Loss of Reputation
You guessed it, the news of business downtime spreads like wildfire. Clients quickly weave distrust into their relationship with your company knowing their data is at risk for a security breach. While your competitors are scooping up the clients you lost, you’ll be focused on cleaning up the mess.
Supply Chain Delays
When one business gets hit in the supply chain, the rest of the chain feels some type of repercussion. Whether it be an increase in supply costs due to a shortage or a loss of clients due to a damaged reputation, supply chain delays are no one’s friends and can severely damage an economic ecosystem.
Hardware Repair Costs
Physical hardware in your organization is not safe from hackers, new trends in cyberattacks see physical hardware being destroyed. Hardware repair costs might include:
- Repairing equipment and facilities
- Building temporary infrastructure
- Diverting resources of the business
- Increasing current resources to support alternative business operations to replace the systems that are temporarily shut down
Downtime and Cybersecurity
How you deal with a cyber crisis determines the trust you get from clients and the market. By investing into a robust cybersecurity program, you are not only securing trust in the market but you are setting yourself apart from competitors. Cybersecurity gives your clients confidence in the way you treat their data, making it an important factor for your long-term success.
Stay Secure with Kyber Security
As the cyber threat landscape constantly evolves, your security measures should be one step ahead. Kyber Security has dedicated professionals experienced in protecting your organization from ever increasing cyber threats. We will work tirelessly to keep your company protected from cyber-attacks.
