Cybersecurity – So What?

In previous and future posts, we will undoubtedly discuss current attacks and risks. But the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of Cybersecurity in your organization. How common is it? What is the impact of the attack? How much money can you lose? This article will cover that.

As of 2024, 14% of breaches involved the exploitation of vulnerabilities as an initial access step, almost triple the amount from last year’s report (2023). [1]
As of 2024, 68% of breaches involved a non-malicious human element, like a person falling victim to a social engineering attack or making an error. [1]
As of 2024, 15% of breaches involved a third party or supplier, such as software supply chains, hosting partner infrastructures, or data custodians. [1]
As of 2024, there was a 71% year-over-year increase in cyberattacks that used stolen or compromised credentials. [2]
As of 2024, 32% of cyber incidents involved data theft and leaks, indicating that more attackers favor stealing and selling data rather than encrypting it for extortion. [2]
As of 2024, 50% of The AI market share milestone will incentivize cybercriminals to invest in developing cost-effective tools to attack AI technologies. [2]
As of 2024, Cloud environment intrusions increased by 75% YoY [3]
As of 2024, there is a 76% YoY increase in victims named on eCrime dedicated leak sites [3]

As of 2023, ransomware payouts rose to a record-breaking 1.1 billion, doubled from 2022 ($567 million) [4]
In 2023, the average payout of a ransomware attack was $568,705. This value does not include the loss of profits from downtime [5].
The average data breach cost for companies in the health sector is $10 million per breach. It costs Finance/Tech sectors $5 million per breach [6]

An extreme example is SolarWinds, which fell victim to a Supply Chain Attack that hit in 2019
The insured losses from the breach alone were around $90 Million [7]. It cost investors in the company approximately $2 Billion as the stock price nosedived after the incident.

We can add more statistics to back up this simple claim. The chances of your organization being hit by an attack are trending upward exponentially, with impacts being higher year over year. Hire Cyber Shepherd today to help protect you.

[1] https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/
[2] https://www.ibm.com/reports/threat-intelligence
[3] https://go.crowdstrike.com/rs/281-OBQ-266/images/GlobalThreatReport2024.pdf
[4] https://www.wired.com/story/ransomware-payments-2023-breaks-record/
[5] https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/ransomware-2024/
[6] https://www.upguard.com/blog/cost-of-data-breach
[7] https://www.bitsight.com/blog/the-financial-impact-of-solarwinds-a-cyber-catastrophe-but-insurance-disaster-avoided