Reputation repair: what does it take to have brand damaged

What does it take to have the brand damage? Little, in fact: a company just have to make some wrongful steps to fail trust, first and foremost. Trust of the consumers, trust of the partners, etc.

Among the most “fascinating” examples is the 2011 and 2014 megafails of different subsidiaries of Sony. In both cases hackers made away with colossal troves of various data, including PID and a multitude of copyrighted materials. This happened due to an apparent negligence of pretty basic security measures. The damage was quite sensitive even for the such a transnational giant as Sony. Reputation has been damaged quite obviously, after falling into the same trap for the second time. It is true that those were very different, unrelated departments, but the shadow was cast upon the entire brand.

Cyberattacks of the lesser scale can also be very costly for businesses, in fact, especially in a case when there are leaks of personal data take place. This tends to be interpreted as a failure of users’ and clients’ trust – and for a good reason.

Reputation repair: what does it take to have #brand damaged. #protectmybiz

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But in fact any cyberincident may (and likely is) interpreted as a consequence of certain errors, irresponsibility, substandard approach to security, and so on. In other words, reputation gets affected, even though at various scale. Of course, reputational damage depends directly on whether or not the incident becomes public knowledge, and had the damage been contain in-house, or the victim company had to bring in third-party expertise to fix the things.

In a recent study, Kaspersky Lab found that 50% company affected by a data leak as a result of an information security incident suffered reputational damage. This, in turn, resulted in decrease of profits and other problems, all the way down to bankruptcy.

Kaspersky Lab’s study shows that the average cost of brand damage caused by a single incident was approximately $8,000 for small and medium-sized businesses, and $200,000 for enterprises.

The extent of reputational damage can be measured by the amount a company has to spend to restore its image. Every fourth company (24%) was forced to seek assistance from external PR consultants. Interestingly, over the last three years, businesses have begun to pay more attention to a positive reputation. Compared to 2013, the number of those turning to third-party communication consultants for help has increased by more than 5%.

Reputation repair: what does it take to have #brand damaged. #protectmybiz

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Earlier it was revealed that SMBs lose up to $38k on average to a cyberbreach, while for enterprises this sum reaches $551k. These include brand/reputation repair. As we can see, the share of reputation fixing for enterprises reaches 40% of total expenses and is around 20% for the SMBs.

There are many ways that cybercriminals may attack the infrastructure, and every weak spot may wind up in a huge problem. Protecting the entire perimeter requires a multi-tier security solutions, which Kaspersky Lab offers in form of  Kaspersky Endpoint Security and Kaspersky Small Office Security, as well as specialized solutions such as Kaspersky Security for Mobile, Kaspersky Fraud Prevention, and Kaspersky Security for Virtualization. The extended support services can make protection even more robust.

Click the links to find out more about these products.