VietNamNet Bridge - The toll that every cyber attack takes on businesses in 2015 was on average $38,000, or VND864 million, a survey by Kaspersky and B2B International has found. The amount of money includes expenses on hiring experts to fix the problems, expenses on missed business opportunities and damages caused by work delays.



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Every cyber attack takes on businesses in 2015 was on average $38,000, or VND864 million

In general, market penetration and financial stability are the two top priority tasks for the owners of small businesses, who often ignore information security. As a result, their information technology (IT) systems are the ‘aiming points’ for cyber crimes.

The surveyors found that in the last year, 1/3 of polled small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) had to delay their work and lost business opportunities, while 88 percent had to ask for help from third parties to fix the problems, which cost $11,000 on average. 

Meanwhile, the profit loss was estimated at $16,000 and the damage to businesses’ reputation $8,000.

About 90 percent of businesses were affected by dangers from outside at least once a year, while 73 percent met internal dangers, such as vulnerabilities in software, a risk of employees losing mobile devices and a risk of data leakage.

The expenses on the solutions to fix the problems caused by cyber attacks are always high, because businesses fear if they cannot prevent cyber crimes, they will lose very important information.

More than 1/3 of the surveyed firms confirmed that they had lost ‘sensitive’ data in cyberattacks.

Ha Than, CEO of Lac Viet JSC, noted that businesses need to find solutions to two problems 1) safety – i.e. protecting data from being deleted due to attacks, mistaken operations, systematic and software errors, and 2) security – decentralizing the data management: who has the right to create and edit data.

According to Than, in order to protect information systems, businesses have to take basic measures as follows: complying with the device manufacturers’ security system and the operating systems; updating patches as soon as they can; creating passwords to systems in the right way (passwords need to be complicated and unpredictable); not using unlicensed software; not opening links on unfamiliar websites; and not buying equipment from unfamiliar sources.

More than 1/3 of the surveyed firms confirmed that they had lost ‘sensitive’ data in cyberattacks.
Buu Dien has quoted experts who have warned that information security would be worse for individuals and small businesses which account for 98 percent of Vietnamese businesses, for many reasons.

Regarding the user's awareness of information security, Than commented that Vietnamese were ‘innocent’ when thinking that information would be safe if it is kept at the companies with anti-virus software and equipment.

Meanwhile, an ESET report showed that Vietnam ranked sixth among six surveyed countries in Asia Pacific about the awareness of network security.


Thanh Mai