(MSPAlliance) – Thursday, April 27, 2006 – Instances of attacks on UK companies are going down, but the cost of each breach is rising, according to the DTI’s Information Breaches Survey. Last year, 62 percent of businesses had at least one security breach, down from 74 percent in 2004. Larger companies saw attacks cut in half.
The survey found that the annual cost of security breaches for UK companies is now $10 billion. Only 50 percent of companies surveyed had codified and tested security policies, while 40 percent spent less than 1 percent of IT budgets on security. The survey found UK companies spend an average of only 4 percent of IT budgets on security.
Viruses remain the biggest threat to IT security, but user misuse of the computer is rising significantly. Over 10 percent of companies reported employee e-mail abuse, while 17 percent said there were problems with employee misuse of the Internet. The survey also found that 60 percent of UK companies do not block suspect Web sites and about one in six do not check e-mail for content.