Cyberattacks increase for both businesses and government organizations

By Neil Zawacki
Updated: August 03, 2011

On August 2nd, 2011, Hewlett-Packard released a public research report that showed that cyberattacks have increased in scope and number against businesses and government organizations. It also indicated that detection and recovery from cyberattacks are the most expensive internal activities within these sectors.

The report was performed by the Ponemon Institute and stated that the median cost of cybercrime among sample organizations was $5.9 million per year. The variation among organizations was quite large - some of them only had to spend $1.5 million to manage cybercrime, while others had to pay up to $36.5 million to deal with the issue. The numbers also indicate that the median cost has risen 56 percent since the previous study in July 2010.

According to the report, the sample organizations experienced 72 successful cyberattacks per week over a four-week period. This represents a 45 percent increase in cybercrime from the previous year. The report also indicated that the vast majority of cybercrime costs were related to malicious code, denial of service attacks, stolen equipment and web-based attacks.

The cybercrime study also explored the money and resources necessary to prevent an online attack from occurring in the first place. It found that the cost of cyberattacks tended to increase greatly if the damage was not quickly resolved and that most organizations took an average of 18 days to successfully resolve each incident. Advanced security intelligence and risk management solutions were also shown to notably lessen the overall impact of cybercrime.

Related Categories
Featured Research
  • Baselining Best Practices

    IT must ensure new applications are rolled out quickly, reliably, and without risk, while at the same time guaranteeing performance and availability. Read this VirtualWisdom white paper to find out how to achieve application-aligned infrastructure performance, and more. more

  • Next Generation End User Experience Management: APM

    In an era of new technologies and cloud-based application delivery models, your business success depends on your ability to ensure optimal application performance and quality user experiences at all times. This complimentary white paper from AppNeta will enlighten you to the new frontiers in end user experience management and much more. more

  • Optimizing Application Delivery to the Network Edge

    Increasingly, the success of business is being tied to the network. The transformation of the network and IT can help organizations deliver and support highly available applications and services while reacting more quickly to changes in the business environment. In this complimentary white paper from IDC, learn how HP can help its customers and partners improve the overall application experience. more

  • Networking Routers Buyer's Guide for SMB & Enterprise

    This buyer's guide presents an overview of leading products on the market today and aims to improve research for companies needing to purchase or upgrade their equipment. more

Related Articles