How Much Can IT Security Failures Cost My Business?
The costs of IT security failures and how to protect your business.
IT security failures can be extremely costly for businesses. According to a 2025 report from IBM, the average cost of a data breach in the United States amounted to a record-breaking $10.22 million, up from $9.36 million in the previous year. To avoid falling victim to a costly IT security failure, it’s crucial to understand the common causes and how to protect your business.
What can lead to an IT security failure?
Sam Blowes, Solution Consultant at Bit-Wizards, says employees pose the biggest security risk to businesses.
“Your own employees mishandling company-owned physical and intellectual property should probably be your top concern,” he explains. “Leaving their laptops unattended, leaving computers unlocked when they walk away, putting their work email on their personal phone but letting the kids play with it in the car... these are all employee-related security risks that businesses face every day.”
Blowes says this security risk often seems innocuous because business owners don’t fully understand how much it leaves them exposed and how many bad actors are out there waiting to take advantage.
“The democratization of the internet means that bad actors from the other side of the planet have just as much access,” explains Blowes. “So, employees are definitely the number one issue here. Their lack of attention or knowledge when it comes to protecting company data can be a huge insider threat.”
Outdated IT management is another common cause of IT security failures.
“In addition to employee-related risks, many businesses don’t update and upgrade their computers and servers as they should, leaving them riddled with security holes,” says Blowes. “These businesses may think they’re saving money at the time, but in actuality, this outdated hardware and software are costing them daily because it’s slow or not working properly. And then eventually, you could pay a much higher price due to a data breach.”
Often times, the inability for businesses to properly protect their assets is what leads to security failures, such as a cyberattack.
What are the costs associated with IT security failures?
In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 859,532 complaints regarding cyberattacks and malicious cyber activity, the majority of which targeted small businesses. According to the same report, the total losses in 2024 were over $16 billion, which was an increase of 33% from the previous year.
The costs associated with a typical cyberattack include several factors:
- Ransom payments: Ransomware is a piece of software that sneaks onto your computer and encrypts your files. The hacker will then demand payment to decrypt your files, and businesses often have no choice but to pay up without the guarantee of getting their assets back. In 2024, 64 percent of organizations were victimized by ransomware.
- Lost sales and/or customers: If a cyberattack victimizes your business, you will likely experience downtime. These outages often create a complete work stoppage where you will not be able to conduct business as usual, ultimately costing you sales or customers. Additionally, if your clients’ data was compromised due to the breach, this could damage your reputation, costing you their business entirely.
- Lost productivity: Any time you or your employees are working to recover from a cyberattack, or you’re just simply unable to work, you’re losing productivity. Lost productivity is just another cost associated with downtime, which costs small- to medium-sized businesses anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 per hour on average.
How can businesses stop wasting money on IT security failures?
Employee training
The main problem with employees is that they may not know that they’re doing anything wrong, or they don’t know what to look for. Training your employees to be skeptical about every external email should be ongoing training that happens regularly. Your employees are your last line of defense before a cybercriminal can get into your network, but they are also the reason why the doors are left unlocked or open. Training on best practices related to email security, passwords, phishing, and other threats should be frequent and ongoing.
Cybersecurity measures
Taking cybersecurity measures, such as undergoing regular penetration tests, is a smart way to help defend your network. A penetration test is an authorized attack on a network to evaluate its security posture. When you undergo a pen test, you’re hiring a company to ethically hack your system. The primary focus of this exercise is to attempt to find a vulnerability in a company’s system and then see whether it can be exploited. Pen tests are vital because they uncover security vulnerabilities before an actual hacker does, keeping your business one step ahead.
Continuous IT management
Outdated IT management often leaves businesses vulnerable to cyber threats, which is why it’s crucial to keep hardware and software up to date, secure, and backed up. For businesses without dedicated IT resources, IT management is often mishandled, leading to security risks. Hiring a managed service provider (MSP) to handle your IT can help your business stop wasting money on security failures.
Protect your business data with Bit-Wizards
At Bit-Wizards, our Managed IT Services (MITS) team makes sure your employees understand security best practices and receive proper training on all the equipment and tools they’re using. Bit-Wizards is also SOC compliant, and we undergo penetration testing twice a year. These efforts keep our data and our clients’ data safe.
When you partner with Bit-Wizards, we guard your company. Our robust security measures include enterprise-grade firewalls, virus protection, advanced threat protection for email, alert monitoring, personnel training, regular backups, and cloud-based recovery restoration.
“We’ve been in the business for over 25 years, which is a rarity in the technology space,” says Blowes. “In two and a half decades, technology has changed so much, and we’ve been here for all of it. So, we can tell you with confidence that it’s simply not cost-effective to skimp on IT security.”
Ready to stop wasting money on IT security failures? Get in touch.