Cybersecurity incidents cost organizations $1,197 per employee, per year

Cybersecurity is an expensive business. To prepare to address advanced threat actors, an enterprise must maintain a complete Security Operations Center (SOC), filled with advanced technologies and experienced professionals who know how to identify and mitigate threats.

All of these factors add up. According to a new report released by threat prevention provider perception point and Osterman researchorganizations pay $1,197 annually per employee to address cyber incidents through email services, cloud collaboration apps or services, and web browsers.

This means that the average company with 500 employees spends $600,000 annually addressing cybersecurity incidents, without factoring in additional costs such as business losses, compliance penalties, or mitigation costs.

With a looming recession in 2023, organizations are under increasing pressure to cut costs and optimize their current security approaches.

The cost of cybersecurity

The announcement comes as more and more organizations are struggling to keep up with the complex threat landscape, with the numbers data leaks increased by 70% in the third quarter of 202.

The Perception Point report notes that one of the key challenges for defenders is that threat actors have changed their attack toolkits beyond email and the web browser, with attacks targeting cloud-based apps and services, such as collaboration apps and storage. , which occur at 60% of the frequency with which they occur on email-based services.

As Gartner estimates that nearly 80% of employees use Collaboration tools for work, enterprises not only need to be able to prevent cyber-attacks on on-premises and cloud environments in a cost-effective manner, but they also need a robust incident response process to resolve security incidents in the shortest possible time.

“In terms of potential risk and harm, preventing attacks has a greater financial impact on the organization,” said Michael Calev, Perception Point’s vice president of business development and strategy.

“One successful breach can cause millions of dollars in damage to an organization – for larger companies it can mean significant loss of revenue, production capacity and reputational damage, while for smaller companies it can spell disaster and even the end.” of their ability to operate,” Calev said.

While processing spam and phishing emails is time-consuming, prevention saves SOC teams money so they don’t have to recover and manage post-breach events.

Making cybersecurity affordable

Managing cybersecurity spending is difficult because even manual tasks can cost a significant amount of time and money.

For example, it takes a security staff an average of 86 hours to resolve a single email-based cyber incident. This means that a single security professional can only handle 23 email incidents per year, a direct cost of $6,452 per incident in time alone.

In response to these high costs, the report recommends companies consolidate their security stack for more efficient threat protection while leveraging managed services to support security teams with scalable incident response capabilities.

Cadev emphasizes that managed services, in particular, provide overburdened security teams with 24/7 coverage, as they can ensure systems remain protected without working around the clock.