Dive Brief:
- A report from the Ponemon Institute found that the average U.S. company of 1,000 employees or more spends $15 million a year fighting cybercrime, CIO reported.
- The number is up 20% compared to 2014.
- Companies spend an average of $43,000 a day on containment costs.
Dive Insight:
Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said one of the reasons for the high costs is that it takes an average of 46 days to contain a successful attack after it has been detected. The attacks are also happening more frequently, he said, and becoming more severe.
Attacks involving malicious code, malware, viruses, worms, trojans and botnets accounted for the biggest percentage of costs, at 40%.
The report also looked at several technologies and strategies that lowered defense costs.
The best-performing technology was security intelligence systems, which, on average, saved companies $3.7 million in cost. Training and security awareness activities saved companies $1.5 million, and the use of security metrics saved about $1 million.
"Companies that invested in these technologies did that much better than those who did not," said Eric Schou, director of product marketing for HP Security.
The research was sponsored by HP.
