Loss of sensitive data - the worst outcome of a cybercrime

The report “Business Perception of IT Security: In the Face of an Inevitable Compromise,” based on the 2016 Corporate IT Security Risks survey, has also discovered that 52% of businesses agree that they have to be better prepared for an inevitable security compromise.

All companies are faced with cyberattacks in some form or another, and in the last 12 months 43% of businesses experienced data loss as a result of a breach. For large businesses, one in five (20%) reported four or more data breaches during the period.

Key emerging threats were well represented among businesses: 49% of companies had experienced a targeted attack and 50% had experienced an incident involving ransomware (with 20% having their data held hostage as a result). Another serious threat which was exposed by the survey is the carelessness of employees: this vector contributed to a security incident in almost half (48%) of the companies.

The top three most difficult threats to manage include: inappropriate sharing of data via mobile devices (54%); physical loss of hardware exposing sensitive information (53%); and inappropriate use of IT resources by employees (50%).

Kaspersky Lab’s 2016 worldwide survey focused on comparing the perception of security threats with the reality of cybersecurity incidents experienced, to highlight potential points of vulnerability beyond the usual suspects of malware and spam.