Survey: 90% of Companies Hit by Network Security Breaches

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A survey of 583 companies in the U.S. has revealed that “90% of the respondents said their organizations’ computers had been breached at least once by hackers over the past 12 months,” according to Computerworld.

These aren’t just small businesses we’re talking about either. The study (available here as a PDF) “surveyed 583 IT and IT security practitioners in the US with an average of 9.57 years of experience. More than half (51 percent) are employed by organizations with more than 5,000 employees.”

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Some of the findings:

– 90% of respondents reported at least one breach over the past 12 months

– 59% reported two or more breaches over the past 12 months

– 10% don’t know if they’ve been breached in the past 12 months

– 34% said “they have low confidence in the ability of their organization’s IT infrastructure to prevent a network security breach”

– 52% said that 10% or less of their IT budget is solely dedicated to security

– 41% said the “financial consequences” of a security breach ran in excess of $500,000

The majority of security breaches came from insider abuse, malicious software download, malware from a website and malware from social media; the three biggest points of entry were employees’ laptops, mobile devices and desktop computers, respectively.

The top consequences of cyber attacks were “theft of information assets” followed by business disruption, the cost of dealing with the breach, legal action and productivity decline.

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