How does cybersecurity help businesses?

Businesses of different sizes recognize the acute need for cybersecurity, especially considering the increasing number of cases when different organizations fall victim to various attacks every day.

Cybersecurity can help businesses be safe and protect all categories of their data from theft and damage, preventing further financial stress.

According to IBM, the average financial impact of a data breach is around $3,8 million, and for the companies with at least a thousand employees, this number is 10x or 100x times higher. Apart from affecting the company’s financial side, a data breach becomes a significant problem for the brand as a whole. In sensitive industries, like banking, these attacks can undermine clients’ trust in the company, which negatively affects the organization’s further performance.

Many companies that experienced the catastrophic effects of a cyberattack are now scrambling for insurance, paying enormous sums for it. So, it’s better to be prepared for the threats by emphasizing cybersecurity within your company because then, around 93% of the breaches can be avoided.

When speaking about cybersecurity, people often associate it with Ukraine software outsourcing because local specialists are known for their high competence in this matter. They can ensure your business’s stability and help it stand up to cyberthreats, avoiding the negative impact of downtime.

To help you understand the impact of cybersecurity on businesses, we’ve created a compilation of the reasons that make companies that pay attention to cybersecurity have a strong competitive edge over others.

What are the most common threats to cybersecurity?

1. Malware

This is a malicious type of software, including spyware, ransomware, viruses, and worms. It gets activated when the users click on malicious links or attachments, which leads to installing harmful software. Also, this type of software can change the browser’s settings, waste a computer’s resources and lower its performance, or use the computer and its resources for DDoS attacks and cryptocurrency mining. Malware is also dangerous due to gathering clients’ personal data, like logins, passwords, or bank cards numbers.

2. Denial of service

These are the activities of cybercriminals that are directed at breaching the performance of the company’s infrastructure and its client services. The attackers artificially create exponential growth of the queries to the online resource to increase its load and put it out of operation.

All the businesses that imply interaction with users via web resources are inclined to such attacks. These include eCommerce, marketplaces, the financial sector, online education, delivery services, and others. All these activities lead to two major consequences: financial losses and reputational side effects.

3. Adware

This type of malicious software displays advertisements on users’ devices. Adware is also referred to as the potentially unwanted program, which is installed without the user’s permission. It interrupts Internet usage by showing an excessive number of ads, pop-ups, or banner ads. Its goal is to bring income to its developer by displaying the advertisements.

Although adware is usually more annoying than dangerous, it might gather users’ personal data. In such cases, the program’s creator can sell people’s ad data, including users’ search history and IP addresses.

4. Ransomware

The software of this type encrypted the files on the users’ computers, demanding money for their decryption. There are several ways ransomware can get into the computer, and the most popular is via spam. These are the unwanted messages in the email used to disseminate ransomware.

Usually, ransomware focuses on businesses rather than the average users, causing performance disruptions and income and data losses.

5. Spyware

This spy program monitors the users’ activities, gathers statistics of their online behaviour, and intercepts personal data. The most popular types of spyware are trackers and keyloggers.

Trackers monitor the clients’ activities on the local device and their physical movements via geodata.

Keyloggers can take screenshots, intercept the information from the memory buffer, microphone recordings, and scan the email traffic. Logins, passwords, and other types of personal data are among the most popular targets of this type of spyware.

How can businesses benefit from cybersecurity?

Let’s see what the main advantages cybersecurity offers for businesses are:

• Protects business. This is the most obvious yet significant advantage because the main task of cybersecurity is to provide digital protection to companies. This benefit allows employees to surf the net without worries and prevents them from being at risk from potential threats. Also, it ensures the safety of your clients’ personal data.
• Safeguards productivity. When attacked by viruses, the computers work several times slower, making working on them almost impossible. This results in the decreased employee productivity, enhanced downtime, and financial losses. The viruses can bring businesses to a standstill, and cybersecurity measures help to prevent this from happening.
• Prevents your website from shutting down. Malware can make the websites go down by infecting the system and making it impossible for the company to host it. This results in money loss due to the missed transactions and the company’s credibility undermining because some viruses can cause lasting damage to the website.
• Blocks spyware. With cybersecurity, you don’t have to be worried about the fact that your computer actions are transmitted to the cybercriminals. There are various programs that prevent spyware from affecting your business and make sure your employees are confident within their workplace, and their online actions remain private.
• Averts adware. Constant ads are annoying and significantly decrease productivity. Also, they allow viruses to enter employees’ computers if they accidentally click on them. With cybersecurity efforts, these incidents can be prevented.
• Increases employees’ and customers’ confidence. Your customers and employees are the primary assets of your company, so your business has to put effort into protecting them from all types of cyber threats. When cyber security measures are taken, the company seems more credible and inspires trust in both team members and clients.

Conclusion

Due to the increasing number of cyberattacks on businesses of different sizes and statuses, from eBay to Yahoo, the companies are starting to pay more attention to their cybersecurity measures. They implement various solutions to protect sensitive data and prevent financial and reputational damage. So, if you strive to stay on top of your competitors, don’t forget about investing in cybersecurity and help your businesses.