The Cost of Doing Business…2.0
Recently, the New York Times published an article regarding the costs associated with a hacking attack aimed at Google in 2005. In an attempt to counter the Santy Worm, which is malicious software that caused infected computers across the globe to automatically enter search queries, Google devoted resources to tackle the problem. Once they were finished, the estimated cost of fighting the attack was in excess of $500,000. They arrived at this number by calculating the hours of their engineering team that dedicated itself to resolving the Santy Worm hack attempt, along with combining the lost revenue. A hefty price tag for sure, but most people wouldn’t put too much thought in it, considering Google’s yearly revenue is in the billions. And given their industry, most would just throw this into the category of the cost of doing business.
So why is this story important? It’s significant because this is the first instance I’m aware of where a company reported the actual costs associated with fighting attempts to breach their systems. Sure, Google has the physical and financial resources to deal with hacker attempts like this, but what about you? Even if your business is used to dealing in the millions of dollars of yearly revenue, $500,000 would still be a major hit against your bottom line. With an economy dealing with uncertainty, it is more important than ever to ensure your resources are protected and dedicated towards the purposes of making your business successful. Even if the actual expenditure of dealing with direct threat is relatively low, the cost of bad publicity, or even worse, an expensive lawsuit, could be far more damaging.
So what can you do? In 2011, Rook will be releasing a series of videos and tools through our Insight blog that will help you take steps at protecting your company. While these tools will be helpful, it is still recommended that you give some thought into having a Security Posture Assessment conducted for your organization. A solid assessment will help you identify where the threats exists, so that you can better equip yourself to deal with the problems that currently exist. Just food for thought.
