Study: Cyber Monday Attacks Cost Millions

A surge in website attacks on the first Monday of the holiday shopping season – also known as Cyber Monday – costs companies millions of dollars in labor and lost revenue, according to the security division of Hopkinton-based EMC Corp.

The study by RSA and the Ponemon Institute concluded that Cyber Monday represents an average 55 percent surge in daily online and mobile retail revenue. That surge can cost, on average, as much as $500,000 per hour or $8,000 per minute. Meanwhile, customer churn from reputation and brand damage can drive losses to as much as $3.4 million from a single hour of disruption.

The study also found that most organizations are unprepared to thwart these attacks quickly. While 64 percent of organizations see significant increases in attack activity, only 23 percent of attacks can be detected quickly and remediated, and nearly 70 percent of organizations do not take additional precautions in anticipation of increased attacks, the study found.

An official with RSA had this warning for businesses, with Cyber Monday just five weeks away (Dec. 2):

"The competitive climate and the unpredictability of the economy does not leave organizations much margin for business error,” said Demetrios Lazarikos, an IT threat strategist with RSA. “Unfortunately, the stealth and savvy cybercriminals have advanced to a point where traditional security and fraud defenses on which businesses rely on are at best insufficient and at worst ... obsolete.”