Cyber Security and the Profit Motive

I posted a couple of weeks ago about Interserve. As a result of sloppy IT practices, it suffered a data breach and as a result will incur losses of approximately £40 million. All of which was easily avoided.

But what makes the cyber security kind of financial loss different to all others is that it’s driven by the profit motive. Most failures in business are driven the usual types of fault – incompetence, laziness, forgetfulness, lack of attention, asleep at the wheel and drunk on the job.

But hackers have their genesis in something totally different – the profit motive. They are driven by a strong desire for profit. And the one thing we know, because it powers most of the world’s economies, is that the desire for profit is a very powerful motive.That makes cyber risk totally different to other types of business fault. Companies that fail to recognise this will continue, like Interserve, to lose large sums of money.