UK Spends £10 Billion a year to Deal with Mounting Cybercrime

Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), a professional services firm, has found that 61% of big firms went through a cyber attempt to infiltrate their systems, and this growing trend is costing around ten billion pounds a year to the UK businesses, as reported by Reuters on April 27, 2010.

Big enterprises are coping with 45 incidents a year on average. Two years ago the number of incidences was 15. It is expected that this rising trend will concern the companies in the country as they may have to face penalties of nearly 500,000 Pounds for any violation of the Data Protection Act.

The notorious Conficker worm, which is believed to have infected over 7 Million systems globally, has been one of the major worries for the businesses in 2009, among those infected were the computer systems of House of Commons and the Ministry of Defence.

PwC revealed that around 92% of the big businesses surveyed in the UK came across some sort of information security incident in 2009. These incidences included accidental leakages of confidential information and attacks launched by cyber criminals, as reported by FT.com on April 28, 2010.

The expenses to handle such incidences are surging rapidly. On an average, to deal with the worst cases, it costs between £280,000 and £690,000. In 2008, the cost to remedy was £90,000 to £170,000

According to Chris Potter, one of the report's author and also a PwC partner, a lot of arguments were made in the election campaign on drawing back £6 Billion in expenses from the economy; however, more than £10 Billion is being expended on dealing with cybercrime, according to the news published by FT.com on April 28, 2010.

As per PwC estimates, nearly 34% of the British firms badly rely on externally hosted software solutions accessed on the Internet. Just 17% of the companies making use of cloud computing services are protecting their data through encryption.

According to the research, in coming years, the conventional view of data security won't be enough in wake of rising threat landscape.

Rather, the companies would be required to realize the significance of a wider approach which can offer competitive advantage and differentiation. For the companies which are reluctant to become adapted to things like increased supplier cost and loss of market share, the cost of inaction will rise over the time.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 5/7/2010