Kaspersky Lab: Businesses pay significant amounts to recover from a digital attack if their virtual infrastructure is impacted during the incident. Specifically, large enterprises can spend over $800,000 on average to recover from a security breach, double the amount compared to incidents involving physical infrastructure alone. 
This is one of the conclusions of a special report by Kaspersky Lab on Virtual Infrastructure Security, which was based on the findings of a global survey conducted in 2015 by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International , with over 5,500 companies participating.
The same is true for smaller and mid-sized businesses, according to the report. Specifically, these companies reported suffering losses of more than $26,000 on average after an attack on their physical infrastructure. When the security breach also affected the virtual infrastructure, the cost was up to $60,000.
The main reason behind the additional cost of a security incident affecting virtual environments is that the majority of enterprises use virtual infrastructures for their most critical operations. 62% of companies that have already adopted virtualization platforms are likely to trust them for their most critical business processes.
While an attack on physical nodes leads to temporary loss of access to critical information in 36% of cases, this percentage increases to 66% when virtual servers and desktops are affected. Also, attacks affecting virtual environments require additional costs more often, as the work of specialists is required. In these cases, companies not only resort to IT consultants, but also need the services of lawyers, risk management specialists, etc.
The complexity of security measures in a virtual environment and a misconception of the threat landscape are two additional factors that increase the cost of recovery in a virtual environment. The Kaspersky Lab report shows that 42% of enterprises believe that security risks in virtual environments are significantly lower than in “physical” environments. 45% of companies report that managing security in virtual environments is perceived as a problem. Furthermore, only 27% of enterprises have implemented a security solution specifically for virtual environments.
“Businesses expect that moving to virtual environments will reduce IT costs and optimize their infrastructure. However, the results of the survey show that if not enough attention is paid to the security of virtual environments, the costs may exceed the benefits. Therefore, we believe that businesses should use customized security solutions that cover virtual environments and offer centralized management and reporting. The solution should have a low impact on resources, high detection capabilities and the ability to immediately identify suspicious activities. That is why we have incorporated this vision and our best technologies into the Kaspersky Security for Virtualization solution,” commented Matvey Voytov, Corporate Products Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab.
More information about Kaspersky Security for Virtualization, the company's tailor-made solution for virtual environments, is available on the Kaspersky Lab website
The full report, with additional statistics on the use of virtualization platforms, is available on a dedicated company website
