Targeted Assessments Can Help Avoid Breach Losses

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Losses from data breaches continue to cost organizations significantly in terms of both financial and reputational damages.

Apr 01, 2025

Cybersecurity

Losses from data breaches continue to cost organizations significantly in terms of both financial and reputational damages. Cybersecurity research by IBM found that data breach costs have been rising by more than 15% on average over the last few years.

Researchers calculate cost using four areas of financial impact:

Detection and escalation
Notification
Post-breach response
Lost business

Other findings from IBM’s global study:

The detection and evaluation component of cost spiked nearly 10%.
The time from initial detection to full recovery stretched to 277 days on average.

While sizeable damages to large multinational corporations drive up the average cost of a breach, the harm is proportional to small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) considering these organizations represent as much as 99% of all U.S. companies.

How can SMBs avoid contributing to these escalating statistics? We recommend performing four assessments that evaluate aspects of cybersecurity from policies and procedures to access and applications:

Network assessment: Where are your vulnerabilities along today’s ever-spreading perimeter?
System assessment: How thorough is your monitoring and detection of operations that increasingly involve the cloud?
HIPAA assessment: What are your exposures related to this sensitive data, a favorite target for cybercrooks?
PCI/DSS assessment: How comprehensive is your compliance with the Payment Card Industry Date Security Standard?

TeamLogic IT has broad experience helping organizations evaluate and manage their cybersecurity. Call us to schedule an assessment.