The State of IT Security

Security threats are on the rise and are predicted to continue to climb in 2015. As a result, the amount of business’ financial losses are on the move as well. According to a 2014 survey, conducted by PwC, the total number of security breaches soared to a total of 42.8 million, a 48% increase since 2013. That’s the equivalent of 117,339 incoming attacks per day, every day! This increase is also reflected in the total number of financial losses due to security compromises which increased 34% since 2013.

So what’s the real state of IT security?

Here are 10 stats that will have you rethinking your current IT security strategy!

1. The total number of security incidents is reported to grow 66% (CAGR, compound annual growth rate)
2. Employees are cited as the number one perpetrators of insider crimes, with 35% of cybercrime incidents being cause by current employees.
3. Security spending has dipped to $4.1 million, down 4% over the last year, which is attributed to the growing number of cybersecurity incidents.
4. In the financial services sector, there is a reported 8% increase in detected security incidents with financial losses from these incidents jumping 24%.
5. The top five security challenges for healthcare payers and providers are: access control and identity management for end users (35%), data leakage prevention (30%), cloud computing (30%), encryption in storage and in transit (27%) and regulatory requirements (23%).
6. There has been a 12.3% growth in the amount of initiatives developed to address the mobile device movement.
7. 37% of respondents reported losing $49,999 or less as a result of a security breach. Do you have an extra $49,000 to lose?
8. Across all industries tested, total downtime experienced over the past 12 months as a result of security incidents was between 1 to 8 hours.
9. Almost 94% of customer networks have traffic going to websites that host malware.
10. Spam volumes are now at their highest level since late 2010.

Sources: Channel Insider, The Global State of Information Security® Survey 2015