infoTECH Feature

July 15, 2011

Almost All Businesses Surveyed Hit by Security Breach in Past Year

A full 90 percent of companies surveyed by the Ponemon Institute admitted that they were hit by a cyber attack over the past 12 months.

Sponsored by Juniper Networks (News - Alert), the survey of IT and security professionals in the U.S. found that the threat of cyber attacks today is approaching “statistical certainty” and that businesses of all shapes and sizes are vulnerable.

More than half (59 percent) of those polled said they were hit by two or more security attacks in the past 12 months. The same percentage acknowledged that the worst effect of the breach was the theft of corporate information followed by the disruption to business operations. Overall, companies say that such attacks have cost them at least half a million dollars in sales losses, overhead, labor, business disruption, and other expenses.

Security breaches are also growing, as 43 percent of those surveyed said they’ve seen a huge increase in the number of attacks over the past year. Further, 77 percent said the cyber attacks have become worse and harder to detect or resolve. A full 34 percent said they don’t have much confidence in the ability of their companies to thwart a breach against their networks.

Looking at some of the specific findings, only 11 percent said they knew the source of all security breaches. A full 48 percent blamed “complexity” as one of the toughest challenges to setting up security solutions, while the same percent pointed to resource limitations. A majority of 76 percent said streamlining their security operations would go a long way toward better fighting security breaches.

Finally, mobile devices and laptops used by employees are seen as the biggest culprits through which security breaches hit a company.

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Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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