BeyondTrust

Phone and broadband provider, TalkTalk has seen its profits halve following a cyber attack in October last year.

The firm, saw pre-tax profits drop to £14m in the year to March, from £32m a year earlier, as the company counted the cost of the data breach.

TalkTalk’s CEO, Dido Harding was forced to apologise after more than 100,000 customers had data stolen during the attack which ultimately cost the company up to £60m.

Andrew Avanessian, vice president at Avecto said the drop in profits should act as a wakeup call to large organizations:

“The significant drop in profits announced by TalkTalk isn’t that surprising given the scale of the cyber attack and the reputational damage it inflicted. All too often we see large scale, well-known organisations fail to address often basic security measures and unfortunately it often takes a breach of this scale to force their hand.

“Large organisations are often so focussed on compliance with data protection legislation that they mistake this for robust security. That’s a dangerous assumption. If the security fundamentals are not addressed and the endpoint systems are not secured then you risk undermining all your defences and ultimately putting your customers, organisational reputation and profits in the line of fire.”

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