Spending on recovery from online breaches rises: PwC
30 Apr 2014
A new study commissioned by the UK government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills found that expenditure by firms to ward off the threat of their servers being compromised by hackers was increasing.
Additionally, the costs associated with a significant cyber security breach had also soared for the third consecutive year and could now be over £1 million for larger organisations.
According to the research compiled by accountancy firm PwC - for small firms the average cost of a worst-case breach was between £65,000 and £115,000.
Overall, 81 per cent of large concerns with over 250 employees reported an online security breach over the past year while 60 per cent of small businesses having less than 50 staff said they had suffered at least one issue in the period.
Both figures are lower than figures for 2013 when 86-per cent of large firms and 64 per cent of small firms reported problems, despite costs arising from cyber security issues having increased.
According to Rob MacGregor, cyber security specialist at PwC in Scotland, many companies were still not doing enough to protect their interests online, ITPro reported.
He added, despite the number of breaches that impacted UK business falling slightly in the last year, the number remained high and in many organisations more needed to be done to drive actual management of security risks.
PwC found that out of those that suffered a breach, 10 per cent were forced to alter the nature of their business as a result.
It said the worst type of breaches companies suffered tended to be a virus, a confidential data loss or an outsider attack.
For small firms, setting their systems right after the attack could cost between £65,000 to £115,000, while the cost for larger firms was reportedly between £600,000 and £1.15 million.
During a discussion on the results of the study at Infosecurity Europe in London earlier yesterday, Chris Potter, a partner at PwC, said many of the affected organisations had security measures in place to protect them, but breaches still occurred.
