Businesses are reporting a massive increase in serious hacking
incidents, with network intrusions reported to have rocketed from one
per cent in 2006 to 13 per cent in 2007.
Andrew Beard, Partner, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, said: "The rise in
intrusions is extremely worrying - bear in mind these are actual
intruders caught on corporate networks, not just people knocking on the
door..."
The shocking figures come from an otherwise upbeat
PWC report into business threats over the last year. The report found
that while businesses have responded to the overall security threat
with increased implementations of anti-malware measures, big exposures
remain. Nine per cent of respondents had cases of customers being
fraudulently impersonated (such as following ID theft), while six per
cent admitted they had lost customer data through a confidentiality
breach.
Beard continued: "Overall, security breaches are down
since our last survey in 2006, which is good news. However, the problem
now is that this issue has become understated due to organisations
becoming desensitised to malware, a certain level of attacks have
become routine."
The survey found that 99 per cent of
businesses back up corporate data and critical systems, 98 per cent
have anti-spyware software in place, and 97 per cent have a firewall
protecting their website and filter incoming email for spam. The
average cost of a single malware incident rose 25 per cent overall and
ranged from £10,000 for SMEs to £2m for larger corporations.
The survey was conducted by PWC in association with the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory reform.