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All estimates are very impressive. The cost of data breaches is expected to hit $2.1 trillion globally by 2019 (Juniper Research). And the World Economic Forum put it as high as 3 trillion. For its part, the UNICRI (a UN Institute) added a few other alarming statistics to these numbers: the cyber crime represented 36% of total costs for damage to the business and loss of competitiveness (Ponemon Institute), and the time required for solving such a problem was on average 32 days. The economic damage caused by hackers is huge. Obviously, the only positive effect of these massive attacks is that the cyber-security industry is booming. It seems, though, that many companies have not yet taken the necessary steps to seriously tackle this issue. As is often the case in such situations which are extremely harmful to the entire community and not only to businesses, governments will introduce rules forcing firms to build stronger defences against hackers. The draft legislation at European level will have substantial financial consequences for companies being soft on data protection. In fact, companies could be charged up to 5% of their turnover if having been convicted of not having effectively protected their data. The targeted companies are not only those running critical infrastructure but all businesses which hold sensitive customer details. But it will be a difficult challenge. Indeed, according to the Global State of Information Security Survey 2016 (PwC) many governments and business leaders think that organized crime and some foreign nation-states are joining forces to launch cyber attacks which are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

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