Cyber attacks cost businesses an average of £1.2 million a year

By Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent Published: 9:12PM GMT twenty-two February 2010

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Forty-two percent of the businesses Symantec spoke to ranked cyber risk as their tip concern. Photo: CLARE KENDALL

Forty-three per cent of the 2,100 businesses surveyed, as piece of computer security organisation Symantecs State of the Enterprise Security Report, all lost trusted or exclusive interpretation during 2009.

The report, that was published today, additionally found that 75 per cent of the businesses polled all experienced a little sort of cyber crime in the last twelve months.

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Cyber crime, for the purposes of the study, was tangible as offences committed around the internet, utilizing a computer or mobile device, to interrupt a commercial operation customarily for monetary gain. Spam emails, feign anti-virus pop-ups and computer hacking are main ways perpetrators are infiltrating businesses systems to do wrong.

The tip 3 reported waste from the businesses questioned, were burglary of egghead property, monetary report and of patron privately identifiable information.

Forty-two percent of the businesses Symantec spoke to ranked cyber risk as their tip concern, over some-more normal concerns such as healthy disasters and terrorism.

In sequence to figure out the monetary waste businesses incurred during 2009, Symantec asked companies to see at a range of factors that negatively impacted them as a outcome of cyber crime such as lost revenue, loss of patron relations and repairs to their firms brand. This came out at a meant normal of �1.2 million per company.

A Symantec orator said: "Organisations need to strengthen their infrastructure by securing endpoints, safeguarding messaging and the web, fortifying vicious inner servers, and implementing the capability to backup and redeem data. Should a crack happen, organisations need to reply to threats rapidly.

"Companies additionally need to rise and make IT policies and automate their correspondence processes. By prioritising risks and defining policies that camber opposite all locations, business can make policies by built-in industrialisation and workflow and not usually brand threats but remediate incidents as they start or expect them prior to they happen."