Companies Paying Even More to Resolve Cyber Attacks

Businesses are having to work harder and spend more time trying to effectively contain and then resolve cyber-attacks, and that effort is starting to take a toll on their bottom lines.

On average this year it’s taken companies 31 days to contain a cyber-attack.  They’ve spent an estimated $639,462 during that 31-day period while they worked to get things back on track. When you crunch the numbers that comes out to a cost of $20,758 per day being spent on containment and resolution. That’s according to research by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy, data protection and information security policy research organization.

The overall trend isn’t looking good. In fact, the 2014 numbers are up 23% from where things stood last year. The 2013 study found companies spent $509,665 and 27 days to isolate and remedy damage done during cyber attacks. That came out to roughly $18,876 being spent each day.

Keep in mind that 31-day figure is just an average. There are some types of cyber attacks which have a much longer recovery time associated with them, while others can be more easily corrected.

The study found that the issues which organizations spent the longest time trying to resolve included:

• Attacks involving malicious insiders took 58.5 days to resolve     
• Malicious code-based attacks took 46.2 days to sort out
• Web-based attacks could take 31.9 days to fix.

It’s a safe bet that $20,758 a day is an unexpected expense few if any companies would be really excited to see added to their books for any amount of time.

So it’s certainly in a company’s best interest to stay far out in front of potential issues rather than have to deal with playing catch-up once the impact of a problem has already been felt. Manage 365⁺ from Arraya Solutions can help your company do just that. This managed infrastructure service provides round-the-clock, 24/7 monitoring for supported devices to ensure they’re healthy, available and performing at the highest level possible.

If a problem is detected, Manage 365⁺ will automatically generate a service desk ticket which will then be validated and remediated by Arraya’s service team. Customers will also be able to check the status of these tickets so they’re in the loop at all times.

Manage 365⁺ can also increase the efficiency of your existing IT staff. Besides service desk tickets, it can oversee and approve scheduled maintenance as well as regular updates. By removing these lower-level tasks from IT’s plate, it frees them up to focus on higher priority deliverables. This can keep IT budgets in check while still taking some of the pressure off swamped IT pros.

To find out more about Manage 365⁺, in addition to the other ways that partnering with Arraya can eliminate some of IT’s long-standing hurdles and expenses, please visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com. While you’re there, be sure to check out Arraya’s blog series celebrating National Cyber Security Awareness Month, which features tips on keeping your company safe from some of today’s biggest online threats.

Arraya’s previous National Cyber Security Awareness Month posts include:

Cyber Security Month: 4 Email Best Practices

Dropbox False Alarm: 5 Tips for More Secure Passwords

Poodle Vulnerability Leads to More Digital Worries