(MSPAlliance) - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - Gartner released a study Tuesday that shows that roughly 40 percent of new security spending from business next year will be on IT security. The rate of data breaches is on the rise, with unprecedented amounts of data involved and more financial value attached to that data than ever.
There is real financial damage to companies through data breaches, with an average cost of $90 per exposed account after legal expenses, recovery and communications costs, not even counting the damage of publicity of such breaches that puts a companys reputation in question.
In March, hackers broke into the CardSystems database, exposing the details of nearly 40 million credit cards. CardSystems lost $1 billion from the breach and nearly went bankrupt. Large companies such as Citigroup and Time Warner have reported losing personal electronic information.
Yet Gartner finds only 20 percent of businesses are taking proactive measures aimed at stemming operating losses, while more have IT security strategies in place only to comply with regulations. The study found that the most commonly used IT security tools included encryption, access control and content monitoring and filtering.
