Talking about risk management strategies for the Internet is often like talking about backups: people don’t want to deal with it until they see significant damage that directly affects them. Companies don’t want to spend money on insurance or time on preparing a risk management plan until they’ve experienced undeniable damage.

This Cnet iiem is relevant: “The attack of the $2 million worm.”.

“Internet-based business disruptions triggered by worms and viruses are costing companies an average of nearly $2 million in lost revenue per incident, market researcher Aberdeen said on Tuesday.

“Out of 162 companies contacted, 84 percent said their business operations have been disrupted and disabled by Internet security events during the last three years. Though the average rate of business operations disruption was one incident per year, about 15 percent of the surveyed companies said their operations had been halted and disabled more than seven times over a three-year period. ”

Of course, everyone has also heard about people and companies that didn’t have adequate backups when their equipment failed. Sometimes people listen to such stories and start making backups before their computers fail.

Backups are a risk management strategy. Other risk management strategies are like backups: they’re best put in place before they’re needed.

-jsq