New data sheds light on what kinds of cyber attacks are targeting your cybersecurity team, what it’s costing them, why it’s taking so much time to fix, and where you should focus resources.

Barracuda’s Cybernomics 101 report provides a lot of insight into the current economics of cyber attacks.

According to the report, the top three initial attacks are:

• DDOS (experienced by 52% of organizations)
• Phishing / Social Engineering (48%)
• Credential Theft (41%)

Do you notice the common link between the bottom two attacks? They both require your users to fall for their attacks, by handing over information to give the threat actors access to your organization’s network.  It’s therefor important to take action to minimize the human element in cyberattacks. Security Awareness training teaches your users to remain vigilant when interacting with email and the web, helping them to mitigate two of the three top attack types.

Another key takeaway I get from the report – attacks are getting more complex and better targeting their organizations:

• 62% of respondents stated cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated
• 55% said those attacks are taking more time to investigate and attempt to mitigate
• 53% of respondents agreed that cyber attacks are becoming more targeted

The average largest ransom any organization paid is $1.38 million. Ouch. But consider that there’s an average cost of $5.34 million to respond to compromises! So while systems are compromised for about 6 hours, IT is going to burn an average of 427 hours “investigating, cleaning, fixing, and documenting” successful attacks. That’s 71 good guy hours for every 1 bad actor hour. The economics of a cyberattack are not in our favor.

Considering the staggering cost to a provider or lost productivity within your in-house IT staff, cleanup is not a cost-effective strategy. What we need to do is focus on reducing the effectiveness of the attacks as they come in. The best way to do this is to provide Security Awareness Training to your staff. By teaching them how to spot phishing, social engineering, and credential management you remove two of the three largest attack types from the table. Training is a low cost product that periodically simulates common cyberattack threats and reports on susceptible employees. They are provided with training opportunities and follow-up simulations to help them become better at dealing with these types of threats.

The choice is yours: an average $1.38 million in ransom and ~400+ IT service hours per successful attack, or a few dollars per employee per month to teach them how to spot cyberattacks and avoid them. What makes more sense to you?