Damage
Last updated
Last updated
Security threats represent a significant financial burden to industries worldwide, with the costs associated with breaches escalating in recent years.
According to IBM's 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average total cost of a data breach now exceeds $4 million, the highest average in the history of the report.
This figure underscores the extensive financial impact of security incidents, which include direct expenses such as ransom payments, system repairs, legal fees, as well as indirect costs like reputational damage and lost customer trust.
The cryptocurrency industry is particularly susceptible to costly breaches.
The 2014 Mt. Gox exchange hack led to the loss of approximately 850,000 bitcoins, valued at about $450 million at the time, and worth $60 billion today, changing the life trajectory of many early adopters of the electronic peer-to-peer cash system.
Over $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from users in 2022, further highlighting that the demand for security products and service for the new asset class, and peer-to-peer networks, is still not met with working solutions.
Although they appear less costly, breaches in the legacy networks are no less impactful.
The SolarWinds breach of 2020 also offers a stark reminder of the disruption associated with security failures in business environments, affecting upwards of 18,000 organizations and leading to an estimated hundreds of millions in global mitigation expenses.
At the state level, the Colonial Pipeline, an American oil pipeline system that originates in Houston, Texas, and carries gasoline and jet fuel mainly to the Southeastern United States, suffered a ransomware attack, which incurred direct costs of roughly $5 million in ransom payments, and additional millions in mitigation expenses.
More than ever, the security risk that individuals, businesses and states are exposed to must be mitigated.
