
By Eric Sugar
Hackers can hurt your business or organization in many ways. First and foremost, cyberattacks can lead to data breaches in which sensitive information is stolen. If a cyber-criminal uses you as a way to get at your customers, suppliers, or employees, these vital business relationships can turn sour.
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Sometimes hackers can encrypt your systems, holding them hostage and asking you to pay money to regain access to them. This problem, called ransomware, explains why keeping backups is so important. Hijackers’ demands lose power when you can just recover your operations from backups.
Cyberattacks can also lead to a loss of productivity. When your team can’t do their work because they don’t have access to the systems or these are unavailable, everything gets delayed and projects fall behind.
Finally, don’t forget the bad press that results for businesses when they are hacked. This isn’t the kind of exposure you want for your brand.
Compliance
If your organization is privy to confidential data, then you’re in charge of protecting it, and the law will hold you accountable for doing so.
The penalties for failing to protect this data can be steep. Depending on the type of information businesses lost and how they tried to protect it, they can be fined up to five percent of their revenue.