Companies Expected to Lose $5.2 Trillion in Opportunity Due to Cyber Attacks Over the Next Five Years

The big business of cyberthreats gets stamped with a huge price tag by professional services company Accenture in their latest report on Securing the Digital Economy.

Nothing wakes up executives like telling them “losses will be in the trillions of dollars.” And that’s exactly what Accenture believes will be the case, based on the current challenges of organizations working to advance the digital economy.

The dependence upon the Internet to do business has reached saturation, according to Accenture, while confidence in the ability for the collective of organizations to maintain security and customer privacy is far less (estimated at about 30% of organizations) and is expected to drop over the next few years.

The challenge is security over data and infrastructure exposed to the Internet. According to the report, the estimated $5.2 trillion costs will primarily be due to direct attacks on organizations (expected to represent 77% of all cyber attacks).

Some of the concerns reported by business leaders include:

• Protecting their companies from third-party security weaknesses is becoming “increasingly difficult” (80%)
• Digital economy advancement “will be severely hindered” unless dramatic Internet security improvements take place (79%)

According to the report, Gartner estimates cybersecurity spending will grow to nearly $170.5 billion by 2022. And that’s a good thing, as organizations need to see the cyber-writing on the wall and view cybersecurity – which includes continual Security Awareness Training to secure the weakest part of an organizations security strategy: their users – as a part of critical operations and a part of doing business in today’s digital economy.