A spyware or adware breach can cause you a huge headache. Besides that throbbing pain at the back of your head, these malicious programs can lead to a lot of other problems. McAfee, a computer security company, pinpoints some key issues a company hit with a spyware or adware intrusion might face.

1. Weakened security: A lot of spyware or adware programs will lower your Internet Explorer security settings to make it easier for some of their buddies to get inside your network as well. Some programs might even disable your anti-virus, anti-spyware or firewall programs. Yikes!
2. Identity theft: Thieves can gather precious information such as social security numbers, passwords, credit card data and other personal information to steal your identity. This is even more dangerous for businesses that keep track of customer information. Putting your customers at risk endangers your credibility as a company.
3. Compliance liability: When you deal with repairing damaged systems, you are wasting time, money and IT resources.
4. Loss of confidential information and intellectual property: Some programs will seek out your company’s trade secret, customer lists, and other priceless intellectual property. They sell these stolen goods to third-party buyers, to profit off of your security disaster.
5. Loss of productivity: Not only will your systems run slower if they are riddled with spyware and adware, but you will also have to spend time rebuilding them and restoring any files that were lost or corrupted. Your IT guys will be completely enveloped in the fiasco, draining them and wasting everyone’s time and money.
6. Loss of network bandwidth: Running spyware and adware will slow down the systems on your network and in turn cost you more dough in the IT department.
7. Resource consumption: Spyware and adware will take up disk space and memory, fill your favorites and start-up menus with unwelcome trash, invite pop-ups, and make your computer more unpleasant to deal with in general. You know how that is, waiting 5 minutes for a program to open or close, getting numerous errors at start-up. Not fun.
8. Legal consequences: When your system is invaded by spyware, you risk having illegal materials, such as pornography, placed on your computer without your consent. There are also a few laws that hold companies responsible under the law for protecting consumer’s personal and private information when it is stored electronically. Some laws also state that in the event of a security breach, customers must be made aware that there personal information has been accessed by a third party. No business wants to put its customers in such a precarious position.

Why should your company have to bear any of these liabilities? With a proper security package, you can greatly reduce the chance you will be hit with any of these disasters.