Cyber threats and attacks grow while losses mount

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 26 March 2009 09:27

IT Industry - Deals

Cyber risks and actual attacks have grown significantly in the past two years and are expected to continue to grow in the next two years, with many organisations experiencing tangible losses as a result of the attacks.

Symantec, in its latest security report - 2009 Managed Security in the Enterprise Report. – says the growth in risks and attacks comes at a time when IT reports it is difficult to address the problems due to inadequate budgets, increased regulatory pressures and staffing woes.

According to Symantec, this has led to most U.S. enterprises - 61 percent of 1,000 IT managers surveyed in January the US and Europe - moving to adopt managed security services.

“Nearly all organisations surveyed (98 percent) have experienced tangible loss as a result of the growth in risks and attacks, with  IT management in large enterprises caught between a rock and a hard place,” according to Grant Geyer, Symantec’s VP of managed services.

“Cyber security is a growing problem, yet organisations are having trouble addressing the problem.  Managed security services provide a way for many organisations to close the gap and ensure that their information and assets are protected.”

According to Symantec, not only are cyber threats growing, they are doing so rapidly, with nearly half of US enterprises surveyed (46 percent) reporting that cyber threats have somewhat significantly increased in the past two years and are expected to significantly increase further in the next two years.

“In fact, 88 percent of those surveyed saw cyber attacks in the past two years with 31 percent seeing attacks on a regular basis and 10 percent seeing a large/extremely large number of attacks,” says Geyer.
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