Consequences of Cybercrime:

According to IDC estimates, there are approximately 80 million businesses worldwide that operate with fewer than 10 employees. Many of these businesses adopt the “security by obscurity” mentality, believing that they are too small to be targeted by cybercriminals and don’t have any data that cybercriminals would want. But Verizon’s 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report, which includes data from worldwide forensic investigations, found that of the 621 data breaches analyzed, 193 breaches – more than 30 percent – occurred at companies with 100 or fewer employees1. It is reasonable to assume that VSBs make up a sizable portion of these victims.

Business owners must understand that as soon as they begin processing credit card payments, storing customer information, or even creating plans for new products, they possess information that is valuable to cybercriminals. In fact, some cybercriminals may prefer these “soft targets” that are known to have poor IT protection. The resulting payoff for each victim attacked is smaller, but it can require less effort for the cybercriminal to successfully attack numerous VSBs instead of a single larger business. However, a key difference is larger businesses will have the funds to recover from an IT security incident, but costs of lost customer data, significant time spent offline, and associated clean-up expenses can add up to thousands of dollars depending on the type of incident, and be enough to drive smaller business to bankruptcy.

READ MORE:
HP India Cautions Against Buying From Unauthorised E-Commerce Channels
The CXO Meet-up on BigData Science