Hacker Attacks Rise Among Business, McAfee Reports

Security specialist McAfee released research finding mid-sized
organizations have seen increased attacks on their networks and systems
since last year. According to the McAfee report The Security Paradox,
more than half of midsize companies surveyed globally have seen more
security incidents in the past year, 40 percent have had data breaches
and 75 percent believe a serious data breach could put them out of
business. Bloor Research conducted research for the report on behalf of
McAfee.

In its third year, the Security Paradox report quantified the cost of
proactive versus reactive security, examines mid-sized companies’
attitudes toward security and contrasts them with security realities.
More than 83 percent said they were concerned or very concerned that
their business could be the target of an intentional and malicious
security attack, 51 percent had actually been attacked, and 16 percent
of those who were attacked took more than a week to recover. Data loss
was the number one consequence of the attack.

Thirty percent of mid-sized organizations had to manage multiple
network security incidents, of which 55 percent took up to five hours
to investigate and remediate, while 58 percent of worldwide respondents
spent less than three hours per week working on, evaluating and
researching IT security. Last year, McAfee reported that figure at 65
percent. Five percent of mid-sized organizations reported that they had
suffered a data loss that had cost them more than $25,000. Of these 25
percent were from China, 14 percent from France and 11 percent from
India.

Forty-seven percent of all reported intellectual property losses were
from EMEA-based mid-sized organizations, while 88 percent of mid-sized
organizations said they were concerned or very concerned about
non-malicious/inadvertent security incidents Sixty percent of worldwide
mid-sized organizations admitted to knowing less than 75 percent of the
pertinent regulatory and compliance requirements pertinent to their
organization.

"Keeping up with security threats is a significant distraction from
running a mid-sized business," said Alex Thurber, senior vice president
of worldwide channel operations for McAfee. "The explosion and
sophistication of malware impacts mid-sized organizations who are
struggling to grow their businesses against a backdrop of competitive
pressures and a slow economic recovery. While the threats have grown,
these companies’ resources to fight them have declined, creating a
paradox.”

In excess of 1,100 surveys were completed with respondents responsible
for IT purchasing, management or overall ownership for governance, risk
and compliance within organizations of 51 to 1,000 employees worldwide,
according to a McAfee release. Surveys were conducted in Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico,
Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The
results were compared to previous studies conducted in Europe and North
America.