Cyber Security Statistics That Make you go “Hmm”

Do you or someone you know have a cavalier attitude towards cyber security?  Maybe you believe it could never happen to you?  Below are some cyber statistics that will make you re-think that stance.

Cyber attack once ever 39 seconds
Just let that sink in for a moment.  Almost twice a minute someone, somewhere is the victim of a cyber attack.  Even though there are billions of people in the world, just how many minutes or hours must pass before you or someone you know has become a victim?  The A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland discovered this alarming statistic while studying the behavior of “brute force” hackers, who use simple software-aided techniques to randomly attack large numbers of computers.
78% of organizations were hacked in 2019
This stat comes from Imperva’s 2019 Cyberthreat Defense Report.  Canadian organizations who suffered cyber attack were slightly above the global number at 79.5%.   If this sounds like no biggie, wait until you see the stats regarding costs.
The average cost of a data breach in 2019 was $3.92 million
That is the cost for just one breach.  This number comes from Security Intelligence’s 2019 Data Breach Report. $3.92 million is the global average.  The number for the US was $8.19 million.  Additionally, Security Intelligence found that the time it takes to recover from breach – from discovery to containment – is 279 days.
28 million Canadians have had their data breached
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada release that stat in their blog on October 31, 2019, one year after mandatory breach reporting came into effect. PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, has required Canadian Businesses since November 1, 2018 to report all data breaches to the privacy commissioner.  In that same year, the commissioner received 680, breach reports, nearly 6 times more than they had during the previous year when reporting was voluntary.  If 28 million Canadians doesn’t sound alarming, remember the population of Canada is 37 million.
60% of small businesses close 6 months after a data breach
This stat was quoted in a Layr security blog.  When you look at the average cost of a breach, it isn’t hard to understand why a small business wold have a hard time recovering from it.  Add the loss of reputation and consumer trust, and it can spell disaster.  Uzado reported recently in it’s blog of a small business that had to shut it’s doors just before Christmas.  Small medical and dental practices seem to be the most at risk.
Don’t be another statistic! Contact Uzado today for your cyber security needs.