How cyber insecurity affects individuals, organisations

Introduction

As long as society exists, insecurity will always be one of the challenges that the human society will have to grapple with. In some cases, the challenges will be quite huge, and in others less. But it will always be an issue.

As society evolves, so also its challenges. In the olden days, security issues were all about people with clubs and swords, until the advent of guns. That was a game changer till the Internet came. We are at that point in history where insecurity has entered the cyber sphere with the potential (it has actually done a lot of harm already) to wreak untold damage.

 

Cyber insecurity

This refers to the threats and challenges that we as individuals and as a society that rely on the cyber sphere face. These threats are real. In many cases, they exceed all expectations, as the perpetrators always find ingenious ways of continuing the acts. In financial terms, billions of dollars are lost to cyber insecurity by individuals and organisations.

Sadly, even national defence systems are not spared from these acts, as state actors might sponsor the perpetrators. below are some of the ways that cyber insecurity affects organisations and nations.

 

Financial loss

Factually, the primary aim of most cybercrime perpetrators is to find a way to rip individuals or organisations off. On many occasions, due to the sophisticated methods they adopt, the perpetrators get lucky; hence, they have taken many victims globally. Another reason they succeed is that their network is usually organised.

 

Reputational loss

This applies more to brands and business organisations, whose reputations are very critical to the success of their enterprises. Once a cyber criminal successfully hacks into their system, they have access and even control over the organisation’s administrative system, their most precious and private data and then proceed to use it against them. As an organisation, this inevitably leads to severe financial losses. Worse still, clients are also heavily affected and this might affect their trust in the organisation.

 

Psychological loss

On an individual level, one major effect of cyber insecurity is psychological. Victims of online scams, at the very least, get to feel like fools and often blame themselves more for falling for a scam. There is this feeling of inadequacy in certain cases. It also leaves both individuals and organisations feeling perpetually unsafe, despite taking the necessary security measures.

 

Data loss

Another effect of cyber insecurity is the loss of vital data. When an individual’s or an organisation’s cyber system is breached by hackers, one of the things that happen (especially in cases where the perpetrators are not scammers) is that the individual or organisation loses vital data. In some cases, the information stolen is never recovered.

 

Conclusion

The above are some of the negative impact of cyber insecurity on an individual or an organisation. It is important, therefore, that serious measures be taken by all concerned to curb or at least reduce the extent of this menace in the society. The cost and effect can be too much as some people or organisations never recover. 

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