Is your organization financially ready for cyber attacks? If it isn’t so, then it is better to be late than never. A survey conducted by Lloyds Bank has revealed that only a third of UK firms have a financial plan in place to mitigate the risks associated with cyber attacks. Rest of them are either still ignoring the possible crisis or aren’t sure what to do or how to overcome the situation.
The state of affairs is similar in the United States as firms in the said nation are also not backed up financially when it comes to mitigating cyber attacks.
Lloyd’s bank conducted the survey at the recent ‘Cyber Beyond IT’ event in London in which was attended by over 150 business leaders from Britain, a few from the US and Europe. Despite the fact that, many admitted that they were extremely concerned about the financial implications of a cyber attack on their business, none of them knew how to better tackle the situation.
The event actually explored the growing digitization of businesses, the supply chains and the emergence of IoT and the cyber attack risks hovering on such business streams. The poll showed that only 32% of the respondents have a financial plan in place to tackle the situation, while 43% do not have enough financial reserves to mitigate the risks of an attack in a timely manner.
What’s more embarrassing is that more than a third of the companies are willing to pay the ransom to get their systems decrypted from ransomware attacks, instead of relying on efficient data backups.
“As the world is evolving at a fast pace, economic impacts of cybersecurity can no longer be ignored”, said Giles Taylor, the head of data and cybersecurity, Commercial Banking Division Lloyd’s Bank.
Taylor added that till date cyber attacks were seen a problem for the IT department. But if the scenario worsens such as the WannaCry attack in May 2017, the whole business can be ruined.
Lloyd’s bank study revealed that 65 percent of firms think that they can recover from a disruptive cyberattack only after 6 months, whilst 18% of them agree that it could take more than the year or so to get back their operations to normalcy.
“The only way to deal with such situations is to have robust IT security strategies in place. It is like prevention is better than recovery”, said David Emm, a principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. He added that a cyber insurance cover can also give a company head a total peace of mind.
Therefore, companies which are concerned about cyber attacks disrupting their IT assets should start covering their digital assets with a cyber insurance policy. As it helps in cushioning them from the financial impact that a cyber attack can cause.
