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Cybersecurity costs are difficult to calculate.This is because of multiple factors which can influence them: How much does it cost to protect a certain amount of data? What is the estimated value of this data? Does good cybersecurity come at a price or can it be achieved on a budget?
In order to have an estimate on how much does cybersecurity cost, first we need to determine the value of the protected data. Unfortunately, most companies do not even know how much their data is worth and thus cannot determine the cost of protecting this data. Pricing depends on: This means that the price is not only affected by the type of cybersecurity solution you deploy but also by your industry and location.
For example, a company in small business needs to spend much less than a company in healthcare. According to Palo Alto research, the total average security spend per capita is $1.53/person/year . This figure includes cyber insurance premiums for both individuals and companies. On average, large enterprises spend around $12 million on cybersecurity per year. Cybercrime damages are expected to reach 6 trillion USD by 2021 according to Juniper Research . For comparison, in 2016, the cost of crime was at 3.5 trillion USD.
Cybercrime damages are also expected to increase by 500% over the next four years which means that cybersecurity is an area worth investing in right now. Securelist found that the cost of cybercrime is expected to reach 2 trillion by 2019 . According to their research, this means that businesses worldwide are losing around $500 billion every year. Total damages are also said to be on the rise with an increase of 12% from 2016-2017 alone. This would mean that 2017 was only the starting point for this trend and that damages will be even greater in the following years.
Forrester’s findings show that total global cyber security spend is around 112 billion USD . This number includes hardware, software, services and people costs. According to research done by Gartner , 2018 spending on cybersecurity products and services was $120,000,000,000 . This is an increase of 8.4% compared to the previous year. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global cybersecurity market will reach $1 trillion in 2021 . Their graph shows that the industry is expected to grow at a steady pace over the next few years.
According to Cybersecurity Market Report, cybersecurity spending worldwide will reach $1 trillion by 2021 . They expect this amount to be spent on cybersecurity services and software. Hardware and research & development costs are also said to increase dramatically over the next five years. Now let’s look at how much does it cost to protect a certain amount of data? According to Ponemon Institute, the average per capita cost of data breach is $141 . At this rate, companies that manage to protect 1 TB of information would spend around $1.41 million in cybersecurity costs. TrustNet provides professional cybersecurity risk assessment services and compliance services for businesses of all sizes.
According to Infosec Institute , the average cost of a cyber attack for small and medium-sized businesses is around $86,000 per hour . This is based on a small network of 20 workstations and 10 servers. Let’s look at some examples: The average salary for a Network Security Engineer in the US is $90,531 per year . That means that a company with 22 employees spending most of their time securing networks would spend around $2 million on cybersecurity salaries alone.
The average salary for a Security Operations Center Analyst is $77,098 per year . Let’s say that the company from the paragraph above decides to have its employees work on hourly contracts so as to lower their costs. In this case, they would pay around $1 million just in labor costs. Assuming that a small company has 1 TB of data that needs to be protected, they would need to pay $1.32 million . This includes the cost of cybersecurity services, software and hardware.