News release: 21 October 2014
Source: Misco News
An alarming number of companies in the UK are unaware that they have suffered a security breach, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The Global State of Security report shows that Britain remains the most targeted country, with 10% more attacks than companies around the world. Sixty-nine percent of the companies surveyed told PwC that they had experienced a security incident in the UK over the past 12 months; the global figure was 59%.
However, of the 475 executives surveyed, a quarter said they had not noticed a breach – a lot higher than the global score – and 8% said they had no idea how many security breaches they had suffered over the last year, IT Pro reports.
Many of the security incidents involved customer or employee records that had been compromised; a quarter of the companies said this was the case, while 22% said that intellectual property had been stolen.
Still, it looks like UK companies are trying to get to grips with the ongoing security issue. More than half (55%) said that they plan to invest more money in security this year. Another third said that security expenditure would remain the same.
Richard Horne, cyber security partner at PwC, said: “A sizeable minority of UK businesses are underestimating the scale of the problem they face. Information security incidents are a fact of life, and a critical element of defence is the ability to detect and respond to incidents quickly before they have an impact on business.”
He added that although any increase in security spending was welcomed, security should be embedded within an organisation’s very DNA through leadership and a clear strategy.
JMS Secure Data response to article;
If your business hasn’t experienced data loss, consider yourself very lucky. Unfortunately, plenty businesses have had the unfortunate experience of losing important, valuable data that helps their business thrive. Losing data can be disastrous for your business, there’s no doubt about it. Remember 60% of companies that lose their data will go out of business within 6 months of the disaster.