Cybercrime Costs Organizations $1.79 Per Minute

Cybercrime costs organizations an incredible $1.79m every minute, according to RiskIQ’s 2021 Evil Internet Minute Report.

The study, which analyzed the volume of malicious activity on the internet, laid bare the scale and damage of cyber-attacks in the past year, finding that 648 cyber-threats occurred every minute.

The researchers calculated that the average cost of a breach is $7.2 per minute, while the overall predicted cybersecurity spend is $280,060 every minute.

E-commerce has been heavily hit by online payment fraud in the past year, with cyber-criminals taking advantage of the shift to online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the e-commerce industry saw a record $861.1bn in sales, it lost $38,052 to online payment fraud every minute.

Healthcare, another sector that has faced a surge in cyber-attacks since the start of COVID-19, lost $13 per minute on digital security breaches in the past year.

The report also looked at the impact of different forms of cybercrime. It showed that per minute, there was $3615 lost to cryptocurrency scams, 525,600 records compromised and six organizations victimized by ransomware.

The scale of cyber-attacks last year was further underlined by the fact that one Magecart host was detected every 31 minutes, one vulnerable Microsoft Exchange server was patched every 1.7 minutes and one malicious mobile app blocklisted every five minutes.

According to Lou Manousos, CEO of RiskIQ, cybercrime is easier than ever to participate in: “Better threat technology makes cyber-criminals more effective and wealthier than ever before. We have compiled the vast numbers associated with cybercrime over the past year with help from our Internet Intelligence Graph and third-party sources to help businesses and researchers better understand what they’re up against.”