Citing a report by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), the White House said on Friday that cyberattacks cost the US economy between $57 billion and $109 billion in 2016.
The estimate includes losses from a wide variety of activities, such as DDoS attacks, data breaches, ransom demands, infrastructure degradation, lost work hours, and theft of proprietary data, intellectual property, and sensitive financial and strategic information. Past incident studies have shown that most cyber incidents deviate from the original target to other related businesses (suppliers, customers, etc.) affecting its operations.
The lack of proper security measures certainly helped the attackers, but the biggest problem was the inadequate distribution of data related to cyberattacks among companies.
The CEA report considers this data exchange to be a critical factor in today's market, mainly because most companies tend to use the same tools for their underlying infrastructure, which often have vulnerabilities.
“Sharing the details of a cyberattack will not only help future victims fight back against attackers but will also accelerate the growth of the cybersecurity market,” the White House said.
However, the CEA report expects things to get better. The main reason is that companies are starting to realize the high cost of an attack on their infrastructure, so they are now pouring more money into securing their systems. Finally, Morgan Stanley estimates that cyber spending will double from $56 billion in 2015 to $128 billion by 2020.
