Businesses are losing huge chunks of their revenue to cyberattacks

How to prevent cyberattacks
(Image credit: Unsplash)

Businesses are paying a huge price for not properly securing their digital assets, a new report from Fastly has claimed.

After surveying almost 1,500 key IT decision makers worldwide Fastly found that businesses had suffered an average of 46 attacks over the last year, resulting in the loss of 9% of their annual revenue. 

But there are other ways cyberattacks are hurting these businesses - network outages (34%), data loss (29%), web apps going offline (24%), customer account compromises (22%) are also results of data breaches, and these can hurt the businesses even more. 


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Chronic talent shortage

To tackle the issue, many firms are going back to the drawing board. Three-quarters (76%) even plan on spending more on cybersecurity. However, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a more secure environment. In fact, a third (35%) believes their firm spent too much on cybersecurity tools in the last year (as opposed to 18% who would like to see bigger budgets). Those that are opposed to more spending argue that just 55% of the security tools purchased are being fully deployed.

Firms are also struggling to find appropriate talent. Almost a third (30%) of the respondents believe the issues they faced in the last 12 months were due to chronic talent shortage. What’s more, 33% expect this to continue in the coming months. Half (46%) think their workers lack experience in dealing with threats, a third (36%) think they don’t have the skills, or are unable to work at scale. Almost half (47%) are trying hard to attract more talent, mostly by increasing their budgets. 

Many respondents (51%) see the solution in Generative AI tools, and expect to invest in them further, over the next two years. A third (37%) is also laser-focused on AI security.

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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