You own or manage a local independent community pharmacy, helping patients with their health and minding your own business. No one would ever attack your computer system, right?
That’s how many other small businesses think, too. And they pay for it.
When you’re busy running a small business, it’s easy to overlook potential dangers you don’t think will happen to you.
But you might be surprised to learn how relevant cyberattacks are to your independent community pharmacy.
Here are some numbers you should know about cyberattacks and how they could affect your business and your patients.
71 percent
Seventy-one percent of cyberattacks occur at businesses with fewer than 100 employees.
This number includes businesses from every field, even medical. So, your independent pharmacy is far more likely to become a victim of a cybercrime than national chain pharmacies.
Even scarier, 60 percent of businesses that suffer an attack are out of business within six months.
$900,000
The average cost of a data breach for small businesses, according to Keeper Security’s “The State of SMB Cybersecurity” report, is $900,000. And, restoring the business back to normal costs an additional $1 million.
The cost of breaches keeps growing every year. Costs associated with a data breach can include hiring a third party to review the attack and loss, damages paid to consumers affected by the breach, fine from the banks and lost customers.
33 percent
Thirty-three percent of shoppers say they would stop shopping at a retailer within three months after it falls victim to a cyberattack, for fear of having their personal data stolen.
A lengthy study by Ponemon Institute and IBM identified lost business as the biggest financial consequence to organizations that experienced a data breach.
Cyberattacks break customers’ trust. If they believe their safety or identity is compromised it will take a lot to win back their trust, and your pharmacy may lose some patients for good.
However, people are more likely to return to a store if the company has a clear plan for preventing future attacks.
48 percent
Forty-eight percent of data breaches are caused by malicious activity.
You can train your employees to reduce errors that cause data breaches, but those steps alone won’t keep out the bad guys. Without security software in place to protect your information, hackers can easily break in.
Cybercrime results in higher costs than accidental data breaches because of the time and expertise required to find the threat and deal with it.
4,281,795,808
The number of records exposed in 2016.
A historic number of exposed records occurred in 2016, which blew past the previous all-time high in 2013 by almost 3.2 billion.
The records compromised included everything from passwords and email addresses to birth dates.
Now you know the numbers. What will you do? Check out our tips to prevent cyberattacks and how to respond if your pharmacy is a victim.
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