Cybercrime: A direct assault on revenues

The damage to the bottom line from cybercrime is the one problem that most immediately comes to everyone’s mind, because cyberattacks can do things that immediately affect a company’s ability to sell its products or services. For example, a Denial of Service (DoS) attack could focus on points of sale. Cash registers, POS software, credit/debit card reading software, and websites are obvious targets. That means you may suddenly be unable to process orders or handle billing, leaving your customers stranded. It is hard to increase revenues if your customers can’t spend their money. But transactions aren’t the only casualty. Your revenues can be damaged long-term from the side effects of an attack. Data breaches can also immediately impact sales because they scare customers away. Because large data breaches are required to be reported to the media and victims, customers are aware of the vulnerability of their data. An immediate result may be their unwillingness to do business with you, at least in the short term. Finally, an attack could hit one of the links in your supply chain, which will affect your production capacity and, you guessed it, hit your revenues. Cybercrime is serious, and while you may be too busy to think about plans to defend your business and data, a Managed Service Provider can be the ideal resource to design and maintain a plan to protect your business.