In Romania, looking at recent situations in which Bit Sentinel specialists have been involved, the cost of remediating security incidents for companies that did not have cyber protection systems and procedures in place starts at EUR50,000 and can reach up to EUR1m in just the first year after the attack.

The recent acceleration of digitalization has brought both substantial benefits and risks. The risk of a cyberattack is perhaps the greatest of these, with serious negative effects on any company, regardless of size or industry. According to a study by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a security breach hit over EUR4m in 2022 and is likely to rise in 2023, continuing a recent trend.

According to the company's experts, the real cost of implementing outsourced Security Operations Center services, also known as Security Operations Center as a Service, or SOCaaS, which are highly effective in aiding organizations identify cyber attacks, is typically as much as 60 times lower.

„The impact of cyber threats can no longer be neglected by companies, and ensuring the security of infrastructures is a growing challenge, regardless of size or industry. Unfortunately, most companies behave reactively in these situations. In such cases, in addition to the operational and reputational losses caused by information leakage and business disruption, restoring security involves considerable additional investments. The financial impact of a successful attack will therefore be huge, and the organization will have to fight long afterward to repair its reputation and regain the trust of customers and partners. To avoid such consequences, SOCaaS will be the best option for monitoring, alerting, investigation, and support during an incident, and to cover key cyber security processes as well. At the same time, outsourcing a security operations center will also help reduce the time an incident is identified and mitigated before causing damage to IT systems”, Andrei Avădănei, CEO of Bit Sentinel, said.

Additional expenses for incident repair may be incurred as a result of failing to comply with local, state, or federal laws and regulations, such as the GDPR or the NIS and NIS2 Directives. The expenses can even be higher than the global average for companies running industrial systems, such as those for automation, warehousing, transportation, energy supply, and water.

SOCaaS services become even more relevant as 83% of organizations globally have had at least one data leak, and 60% of those leaks have resulted in higher prices charged to consumers, according to a report by IBM and Ponemon Institute.

„As we see in the market, an in-house security operations center (SOC) does not always succeed in fully meeting an organization's prevention needs. On the one hand, cybersecurity specialists are very hard to find and retention methods are expensive. Moreover, members of an in-house SOC are part of an extended security team, so they have a limited schedule in which they have to deal with other tasks and often do not deal with all the alerts they receive, thus creating vulnerability for the company. One solution to these problems is to outsource SOC services in the form of SOCaaS, which, despite expectations, comes at a much more advantageous cost compared to having an in-house department. In addition, a dedicated team of experts will focus only on the organization's cybersecurity needs, enabling them to continuously monitor, identify and prevent any risks, early and effectively. A SOCaaS is dedicated to all companies that want to ensure their data security, from SMEs to companies with hundreds or even thousands of employees. It can be tailored to needs, technologies used, or budgets. We believe that cybersecurity services are fundamental for any company, so they should be as affordable as possible, especially in terms of costs,” Avădănei added.

Through SOCaaS, companies can benefit from the services of a highly trained security team and advanced cloud-based monitoring and security services, that are always on, to identify and prevent attacks. In addition, any organization has access to appropriate data protection and, where necessary, recovery processes, as well as regular training programs for employees to help them identify and report cyber threats, thus effectively minimizing vulnerabilities.