A survey of companies across the globe has found an uptick in the number of targeted attacks against businesses.
The survey is from security vendor Kaspersky Lab and marketing research firm B2B International and fields responses from 3,900 respondents from 27 countries. According to the report, 94 percent of businesses have encountered at least one cyber-security incident in the past 12 months, with 12 percent of the countries having experienced at least one targeted attack.
In the 2012 and 2013 surveys, the percentage of companies experiencing targeted attacks was nine. This uptick is bad news for businesses, as damages from one successful targeted attack could cost a company as much as $2.54 million for enterprises and $84,000 for small businesses, the report states.
“The popularity of targeted attacks among malicious users varies depending on a company’s field of businesses,” according to the report. “Organizations in the government and defense sector encountered targeted attacks most frequently. Some 18 percent of respondents representing those types of companies reported having run into at least one targeted attack. Remarkably, targeted attacks in that sector take place even more frequently than DDoS [distributed denial-of-service] attacks, for example, which were named by 12 percent of respondents in the government and defense sector.”
Targeted attacks were also reported by 17 percent of the telecom industry and 16 percent of those in the financial sector, according to the survey. Sixteen percent of companies in the transportation and logistics sector also reported experiencing targeted attacks.
Overall, targeted attacks were reported to be responsible for eight percent of data leaks.
“The survey results clearly indicate that many businesses now recognize that the threat of a targeted attack is very real and could be very harmful for their organization,” said Chris Doggett, managing director of Kaspersky Lab, North America, in a statement.
“However, we are seeing that the number of companies that are actually taking that knowledge and turning it into an action to protect their organization from such attacks is still alarmingly low,” said Doggett. “With major breaches being reported regularly now, it is critical for businesses of all sizes to make protection of their IT infrastructure their top priority, especially given the damages that arise from each successful targeted attack.”
The survey can read here.
