Global heavy losses to insecure data

Last year, companies worldwide lost about $1 trillion to intellectual property theft and damage repair, an estimate McAfee calls conservative. The company warns that a weakened worldwide economy will just increase data theft in 2009.

McAfee based that hefty number on a survey conducted by Purdue University's Center for Information Assurance and Security. Data from over 800 CIOs in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, China, India, and Dubai were examined, especially in regard to the origination, storage, transfer and loss of intellectual property (IP). Combined, companies in the survey lost $4.6 billion worth of IP last year, and spent about $600 million patching up holes from data breaches.

The value of information security

Ernst & Young's 2008 Global Information Security Survey (GISS), which canvassed nearly 1,400 senior executives in more than 50 countries, shows that most believe that a security incident would have a greater impact on reputation and brand than on revenues.

85% of respondents citing damage to reputation and brand as significant, compared with 72% for loss of revenues, 71% for loss of customers. Regulatory sanction is cited by only 68%, while proportion of damage to employee relationships is 49%.

Concern of 2009 is the inside data theft

Experts expect the threat to IP to worsen this year as the global economy worsens. The two main threats seem to be cyber gangs and "financially challenged" employees.

According to McAfee’s survey on the concern of over 800 CIOs, respondents regarded this second group to be a bigger threat than outsiders. While 39 percent cited outside data thieves as their biggest concern, 42 percent were worried about "displaced" employees looking to improve their situations by selling off vital corporate information.

"This report is a wake-up call because the current economic crisis is poised to create a global meltdown in vital information," Dave DeWalt, president and chief executive officer of McAfee. "Increased pressures on firms to reduce spending and cut staffing have led to more porous defenses and increased opportunity for crime. Companies need to stop looking at security as a cost center but as a business enabler."

The trend of security investment worldwide

A survey of IT security professionals conducted by Gartner has found that organisations in the Asia Pacific region spend a larger proportion of their IT budget on security than their North American and European counterparts.

Although there is an economic downturn in the U.S., 40 percent of Asia Pacific organisations surveyed said their 2008 IT security budget has increased over 2007, while 45 percent claimed it had remained “about the same”. Next year, most of them expect their IT security budgets to remain the same or increase in 2008.
Data security and lack of skilled resources ranked among the top concerns of organisations in Asia. However, more than 30 percent did not include standards or government regulations on the list of what is driving their IT security spending. That is reason for the figures released Gartner’s survey, the average percentage of the IT budget dedicated to security in Asia Pacific is around 15 percent, which is much higher than in North America and Europe. Hence, Asia Pacific is the potential market for IT security solution suppliers.

Ernst & Young also comes to a similar conclusion to increased investments in information security in the next year. Despite tightening economies, they also forecast the enhancement of information security in privacy. 67% of respondents interviewed say they have now implemented controls to protect personal information.

More than half of the security vulnerabilities going unpatched

74% of the security vulnerabilities disclosed during 2008 had no patches available from the vendor by the end of the year, according to a report released on Monday by IBM's X-Force research group.

Meanwhile, 46 per cent of vulnerabilities from 2006 and 44 per cent from 2007 still had no patch by the end of 2008, the 2008 X-Force Trend and Risk report said. X-Force documented a record number of 7,406 new vulnerabilities last year.

Meanwhile, 46 per cent of all malware attacks last year were Trojans targeting people playing online games and doing online banking, and 90 per cent of phishing attacks targeted financial institutions, according to the report.

Most of the spam last year appeared to come from Russia (12 percent), followed by the U.S. (9.6 percent), and Turkey (7.8 percent), although the spam senders could be located in a different location, the report says. China unseated the US as the country hosting the largest number of malicious websites for the first time last year.