Once customers learn that a web site has been sabotaged or vandalized, they might take their business elsewhere. This emphasizes the importance of building strong security and reliability into software systems to minimize such risks. Even governments are susceptible to online security breaches. In many of these cases, malicious hackers broke into web servers hosting these sites and defaced the web pages with their own political messages. Luckily for these agencies, such tampering did not have a high dollar cost.
Online attacks present a harsher reality in the commercial world.
Consider the financial services industry. People expect investment firms to protect and grow their financial assets. Brand name and trust are critical attributes to winning customers and retaining loyalty. Vulnerability to these types of common digital-age attacks loudly declares the inability of a company to protect its customers' investments. It is no surprise, then, when companies such as eTrade lose significant numbers of customers, revenue and market value due to online downtime.