90% of businesses say they were hacked in the last year

Emil

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90 percent of businesses say they have fallen victim to a cyber security breach at least once in the past 12 months. That percentage isn't based on a small number either: 583 US companies participated in the questionnaire.

The data comes from a new survey of US IT and IT Security professionals, conducted independently by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Juniper Networks. You can check out the 25-page report here: Perceptions About Network Security (PDF).

The 90 percent number is just for one breach; organizations today are experiencing multiple breaches. In fact, more than half (59 percent) of respondents cited two or more breaches in the past 12 months. Companies indicate that security breaches have cost them a least half a million dollars to address in terms of cash outlays, business disruption, revenue losses, internal labor, overhead, and other expenses. Most respondents (59 percent) report that the most severe consequence of any breach was the theft of information assets followed by business disruption.

It gets worse. Security attacks are on the rise, according to the data provided by these companies. 43 percent of respondents indicating there has been a significant increase in the frequency of cyber attacks during the past 12 months and 77 percent say these attacks have become more severe or difficult to detect/contain. As a result of these multiple breaches, more than one-third (34 percent) of respondents say they have low confidence in the ability of their organization's IT infrastructure to prevent a network security breach in the future.

It's also worth noting that only 11 percent of respondents believe they know the source of all their network's security breaches. Unsurprisingly, employee mobile devices and laptops are seen as the most likely entry point from which serious cyber attacks are unleashed against a company.

"Our survey research provides evidence that many organizations are ill-equipped to prevent cyber attacks against networks and enterprise systems," Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said in a statement. "This study suggests conventional network security methods need to improve in order to curtail internal and external threats."

"The size and complexity of today's security threats continue to intensify leaving organizations and governments vulnerable to cyber attacks," Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Networks Device and Network Services, said in a statement. "Business leaders need to consider a more aggressive, systemic security approach—implementing end-to-end comprehensive protection at all points in the network to help mitigate risk."

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Those are some incredible statistics. And I believe them. Where I work (a government agency), there has been an attempt to breach our security a number of times.
 
I saw an email from EA this morning that their Never Winter Night forum server got hack. Told Matt about incase he wanted to use it for news but I guess not XD or he hasn't been on yet...
 
stewi0001 said:
I saw an email from EA this morning that their Never Winter Night forum server got hack. Told Matt about incase he wanted to use it for news but I guess not XD or he hasn't been on yet...

Ya, seems like one of their old forum servers got compromised and EA isn't taking any chances resetting everyones password.
 
TomSEA said:
Those are some incredible statistics. And I believe them. Where I work (a government agency), there has been an attempt to breach our security a number of times.

Although your statement breathes grams of credibility for the simple fact that you work for the govt, I believe you. Someone I pissed off tried to hack into my yahoo acount 7 years ago. It's also cute how close you put "incredible" to "believe". :)

(There's lies, big lies, and then there's statistics)
 
To anyone who works in network security, you're right. These statistics aren't surprising in the least. Especially for folks working in high-value environments (i.e. large corporations, governments, etc.).
 
Considering that both high-speed internet and computers have become standard (if not necessary) household items over the last 12 years, I'm surprised these numbers aren't larger. As more people get connected and become tech savvy globally the number and complexity of these breaches is only going to grow. There's going to be a lot of money to be made in cyber security over the next decade.
 
I wouldn't say more people are becoming tech savy for say. I would say with such a vast increase of users with the last 5+ years, the world wide web user base has expanded to where tech savy and not tech savy are far from the two types. What is tech savy? Seems the difinition is bluried these days. Computers becoming more simple, companies requiring a vastly large amount out of IT staff, ,less knowledgeable individuals within the IT field, along with companies making the employment process for such IT Techs are only some of matters that make that article perfectly true.
Boils down to Companys need to step up their policys over all in regards to IT Staff and Budget.
 
I will say that 90% of the companies are the ones that know that they got hacked -- the other 10% got hacked as well but haven't found out about it yet...
 
stewi0001 said:
I saw an email from EA this morning that their Never Winter Night forum server got hack. Told Matt about incase he wanted to use it for news but I guess not XD or he hasn't been on yet...

yea they told me they also lost my CD key, I was like ahh great now my games CD key gonna appear on torrents and my CD key gonna be blacklisted :(
 
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