Reckitt Benckiser

In response to the revelation that the ‘Petya’ attack cost Reckitt Benckiser £100m, Wieland Alge, EMEA GM at Barracuda commented below.

Wieland Alge, EMEA GM at Barracuda:

“Reckitt Benckiser’s forecast £100m revenue loss as a result of the “Petya” cyber attack proves yet again that even seemingly untouchable commercial giants can feel the impact of a cyber attack deeply.

Despite what people mistakenly assume, the true cost of a data breach extends far beyond remediation. According to the Ponemon Institute’s 2017 research, the average cost of a data breach is $3.62M globally. Our own research conducted earlier this year proved attacks can cause long-term damage to companies in several ways:

More than three in ten of those that we questioned admitted that their customers (35%) and even their employees (32%) had lost faith in their cyber security as a result of an attack;

Perhaps most shockingly, around one in five reported a temporary closure of the business (21%) or a loss of customers altogether (17%).

Cyber security has become a boardroom issue like never before: in this age of increasingly targeted and sophisticated attacks, organisations need to ensure that their frontline security defences and employee education are robust enough to prevent them from being the next cyber attack headline.”