According to the fifth “Cost of Cybercrime” report, by the Ponemon Institute, attacks on the networks of large companies in the United States cause damages costing $12.7 million annually, an increase of 9.7% from the previous year.
The report, sponsored this year by Hewlett Packard and specifically the company's security department, states that data loss and workflow disruption are the cause of three-quarters of so-called "Cybercrime". It also states that companies that prioritize the security of their systems have reduced costs in terms of damages from such attacks during the year and save approximately $2.6 million.
Larry Ponemon, president and founder of the Ponemon Institute, says, “The disruption of workflow, the loss of data and information, and the time it takes for a security breach to be discovered are all costly to the company that suffers such a blow.”
The Ponemon Institute is releasing its annual Cost of Cybercrime report for the fifth consecutive year, and it says that companies don’t know what’s happening on their networks. It takes the average company 170 days to discover that they’ve been attacked and an average of 31 days to fix the problem, with each day adding about $21,000 to the cost of the damage. Attacks from inside companies in particular take about two months to resolve.
The cost of damage also depends on the size of the company, and although the report is based on companies with 1,000 employees, larger companies have even higher damage costs from such attacks. In contrast, smaller companies have a higher cost per employee, accounting for about $1,601 compared to $437 per employee for larger companies. Costs were also higher for energy, utilities and financial companies.
Almost all companies have had to deal with attacks on their website, trojans, worms, viruses and malicious code that attackers used to enter their system!
