Businesses skeptical about external hacking

A global survey of IT managers from IDC and sponsored by Dimension Data has shown that the vast majority think that having the company hacked from the outside is highly unlikely.

Of the companies questioned just 15 percent thought that they would lose data to hackers, with three times as many thinking employee carelessness would cause a breach.

However, if such an attack did occur is would cause the most damage.

“The challenge when protecting an organisation from internal attack is that traditional defences are designed to face outward, at the perimeter of a network, whereas the inside of the network remains relatively free of security controls,” said Neil Campbell, global general manager security solutions for Dimension Data, which sponsored the research.

“Compounding the problem, security awareness training initiatives for employees often go unfunded. That’s because organisations find it difficult to demonstrate a return on investment for such training.”

The most likely loss scenario found by Eric Domage, IDC EMEA program manager of European security products and strategies, is the loss of intellectual property.

“The next most severe impact would come from customer sensitivity to security and privacy - followed by the availability of IT systems in order to offer products and services,” he said.

Over 400 companies were surveyed in 18 countries and the most likely security incidents were PC theft or loss (54 percent), spam attack (45 percent), misuse or hacking (45 percent), and spying tools (45 percent).