Financial
Nearly every company that falls victim to a phishing scam faces financial consequences.
Along with the direct costs of the breach, phishing attacks on company personnel can also result in fines from various regulatory bodies for rule violations. The damages from stolen customer data can be steep, and other penalties can be astronomical.
The global average cost of a data breach in 2023 was USD 4.45 million, a 15% increase over three years.
This includes the costs of fending off an attack, recovering from an attack, experiencing depreciating stock value, and incurring regulatory fines associated with the incident if regulators discover that your business didn't implement the proper security mechanisms.
You will need extra funds to manage Identity protection: and compensation of customers or employees whose data was stolen following a phishing attack.
An attacker could also transfer funds from a company’s account through impersonation via phishing.
Violating regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, PCI, and European GDPR may attract heavy fines. The extent of the fines depends on the industry and the scope of the breach.
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered Equifax to pay up to $700 million over their 2017 data breach, which exposed the personal information of nearly 150 million Americans. It was one of the biggest data breaches in history, and the FTC wasn’t messing around.