“Who’s going to bother targeting a business like mine?”
It’s the most common response we get when this topic comes up. Understandable — but the data doesn’t bear it out. Most businesses that get hit didn’t think they were targets either.
The Numbers Worth Knowing
A Check Point Software Technologies report on the Greek market found that 80% of businesses had experienced a phishing or scamming attack. Of those, 74% said they weren’t prepared to handle it when it happened.
Ransomware is particularly disruptive: files are encrypted, operations stop, and you don’t get access back until a ransom is paid — if at all. Business email compromise, where attackers impersonate a trusted contact to redirect a payment or extract sensitive information, is also on the rise. These aren’t edge cases. They’re the most common types of incidents businesses face right now.
Not familiar with cyber insurance? A good starting point: Cyber Insurance for Businesses: What It Is and Why Yours Needs It.
What an Attack Actually Looks Like
Most cyberattacks don’t start with anything dramatic. They start with something that looks like a normal Tuesday morning.
An employee gets a message — it could be an email, sometimes a text — that appears to come from a known supplier or colleague. The tone is professional, the request is routine: open this attachment, update these payment details, confirm your login. One click is enough.
From there, the attack can branch in different directions. Some end with files locked and a ransom demand. Others involve customer data being quietly copied and sold. In cases of invoice fraud, bank details get changed and a payment ends up in the wrong account — often discovered only once the legitimate vendor chases for money that was supposedly already sent.
Then there are the slow-burn attacks. An attacker gains access to a company email account, doesn’t touch anything, and spends weeks watching — learning the business, monitoring deals in progress, waiting for the right moment to intervene. By the time it surfaces, the damage is done.
What It Costs
The financial impact of a breach tends to be larger than businesses anticipate before they’ve been through one.
On the immediate side: systems offline for days or weeks, revenue gone during that window, and recovery costs that can run surprisingly high. If personal data was involved, there are GDPR notification obligations and potential regulatory exposure on top of that.
The longer-term cost is harder to price but often more significant: client trust. Customers who lose confidence in how you handle their data don’t tend to announce it — they just quietly take their business elsewhere. Rebuilding that trust takes far longer than rebuilding a server.
Good Security Helps. Insurance Closes the Gap
Regular training, strong access controls, keeping systems patched and up to date — these are the foundations, and they make a real difference. A well-prepared business is significantly less likely to be successfully breached.
But even with solid defences, no business can guarantee it won’t be hit. Cyber insurance covers what happens when prevention falls short: the cost of recovery, the lost revenue, the legal exposure. It’s how businesses get back to normal without absorbing the full hit themselves.
If your business is subject to NIS2, there’s an additional dimension to this worth reading: NIS2 & Cyber Insurance: Why Compliance Alone Won’t Protect Your Business .
Preparedness Is a Choice
Cyber incidents affecting Greek businesses aren’t outliers. They’re routine. The difference between a business that recovers quickly and one that struggles to come back tends to come down to preparation — not luck.
That means the right security practices, yes. But also the right insurance. Because when something goes wrong, having both in place is what makes recovery realistic.
FAQ
“I have a small business — why would anyone bother targeting me?” That’s one of the most dangerous assumptions out there. 80% of Greek businesses have experienced a phishing or scamming attack. Attackers don’t choose based on size — they choose based on vulnerability.
How and when does a business actually realize it’s been attacked? Often, far too late. There are cases where someone had access to a company’s email for weeks before making a move. Attacks start quietly and only become visible once the damage is already done.
Beyond the financial hit, what else is at stake? Your reputation. Customer trust takes years to build and can be shaken in a matter of days. That’s often the hardest consequence to reverse after a cyberattack.
Get in touch to talk through what that looks like for your business.
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