In 2025, the cost and complexity of cyberattacks have reached unprecedented levels. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, the global average cost of a data breach has risen to $4.88 million, marking a 10% increase from the previous year – the highest ever recorded. In the UK specifically, the average cost is even higher, at $5.05 million, reflecting the region’s rigorous regulatory standards and high digital exposure.

Recent events have brought the reality of this statistic home. In the past week, two of the UK’s most recognisable retailers – Marks & Spencer (M&S) and the Co-op – were hit by significant cyberattacks. The operational fallout has been substantial, highlighting the critical importance of secure, resilient communication infrastructure as part of any modern cybersecurity strategy.

The Financial Reality of a Breach

When a breach occurs, the true cost extends well beyond IT. The financial, legal, operational and reputational consequences can last for years. On average, an organisation can expect the following costs:

Cost Category	Estimated Amount (USD)	Details
Regulatory fines	$2M–$20M+	GDPR allows fines of up to 4% of global turnover. British Airways was fined £20M.
Legal fees & settlements	$5M–$50M+	Class actions, privacy claims, and contractual disputes.
Customer compensation	$1M–$30M+	Credit monitoring, refunds, and goodwill payments.
Incident response & remediation	$3M–$50M+	Forensics, system rebuilds, consultancy, and vendor replacements.
Lost business / downtime	$10M–$100M+	Revenue loss, customer churn, and prolonged operational disruption.
Reputation recovery	$1M–$25M+	Marketing, public relations, and trust rebuilding.

Total potential damage: $20 million to over $200 million, depending on scale, sector, and the organisation’s preparedness.

For M&S, the financial hit was immediate. Online order capability was suspended for weeks, resulting in a reported £43 million in lost revenue per week. Meanwhile, the Co-op faced supply chain disruptions and customer frustration due to IT shutdowns affecting stock availability across multiple stores.

For M&S the markets have also been unforgiving.  As of early May 2025 MoneyWeek reported a £700M drop in the company’s valuation on the stock market.

The Human Element: A Persistent Weakness

Despite significant investment in perimeter defences and monitoring, 74% of breaches still involve a human element, according to Secureframe. In the M&S and Co-op incidents, early reports indicate that attackers gained access via social engineering tactics, including impersonating staff to manipulate IT service desks into resetting credentials. This is a reminder that the weakest point in any system is often not the technology – but the people using it.

If the company had an approved closed secure comms solution over which to communicate highly sensitive information the challenge for the imposter of impersonating a colleague over this system increases dramatically.  A system like Salt, when used as an internal safe haven network, can prevent these types of attacks.

The Role of Secure Communications During a Breach

When a cyberattack hits and core systems are compromised, what fails next is often coordination. Internal communications stall as the normal modes of communications are not available. Executives and response teams scramble to find an alternative way to communicate safely. Without an available reliable means of communication, the propagation of important information relating to the incident drops dramatically. 

This is why having a readily available and independent secure communications network – a “safe haven” – becomes essential. A platform purpose-built to withstand breaches and remain operational when other systems fail is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.

Salt Communications: A Practical Safe Haven

Salt Communications provides such a platform. Designed with strong perimeter defences, end-to-end encryption and independent infrastructure, Salt allows organisations to:

• Communicate securely (voice, messaging, file sharing) even during widespread outages.
  
• Coordinate executive and operational response without exposing sensitive information.
  
• Maintain confidentiality and control over incident-related decision-making.
• Securely Broadcast the status of the unfolding situation to key staff members to maintain coherency while the crisis is being managed.
  

Plan for When, Not If

Cyberattacks are not rare events. For most organisations, the question is not if but when an incident will occur. When it does, maintaining secure and resilient communication is critical to containing damage and recovering quickly.

Investing in technical defences is vital, but so is preparing for the moment those systems are breached. A secure communications platform like Salt can serve as your operational backbone before, during and after a crisis.  It’s too late and too fast moving to think about something like this in the middle of the crisis.  Think about it now. Act now.

About Salt Communications:

Salt Communications is a multi-award winning cyber security company providing a fully enterprise-managed software solution giving absolute privacy in mobile communications. It is easy to deploy and uses multi-layered encryption techniques to meet the highest of security standards. Salt Communications offers ‘Peace of Mind’ for Organisations who value their privacy, by giving them complete control and secure communications, to protect their trusted relationships and stay safe. Salt Communications is headquartered in Belfast, N. Ireland, for more information visit Salt Communications. 

Sources:

https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62v34zv828o

://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/14/co-op-cyber-attack-stock-availability-in-stores-will-not-improve-until-weekendhttps://secureframe.com/blog/data-breach-statistics
https://www.ft.com/content/723b6195-1ce7-4b5f-94f5-729e9152c578