Hypergrowth companies, which experience above 40 percent annual growth, have much to worry about with regards to scaling their business. This is according to a new assessment report.
The report identifies that the concerns increase especially as demand and revenue continue to increase. The last things these companies want to worry about are hacks and other cybersecurity issues.
Unfortunately, so termed hypergrowth companies are more likely than standard growth to have had over 10 cybersecurity breaches. This is borne out by hypergrowth companies being reportedly more likely than standard growth to have had over ten cybersecurity breaches.
In addition, overall costs of the attacks were more for standard growth companies (averaging at $119,000 for hypergrowth firms compared with $25,000 for companies following an accelerated growth cycle).
The cost of a cyberattack consist of hidden elements. According to Deloitte these are:
- Insurance premium increases.
- Increased cost to raise debt.
- Operational disruption or destruction.
- Lost value of customer relationships.
- Value of lost contract revenue.
- Devaluation of trade name.
- Loss of intellectual property.
The costs associated with an attack can continue to arise for a long time, even months or years, after the initial incident.
One definition of a hypergrowth firm is a company undergoing a phase of rapid expansion where the company is experiencing as they scale-up. Commonly the term is used when a company’s compound annual growth rate is 40 percent or greater.
With the survey, 1,000 employed people were questioned. Despite the risks of a cyberattack being higher, the responses from those questions indicated that employees of hypergrowth companies were found to be 14 percent more likely than standard growth to believe they are proactive toward cybersecurity threats.
However, attack preparedness takes different forms and standard growth companies were found to be more likely to back up data and to use anti-malware and firewall software. This means a standard growth company would be able to recover from a cyberattack far more quickly.
