Study: Most Organizations Hit by Cybercrime

A report released Monday by Symantec Corp. gauges the far reaching impact of cybercrime and finds most organizations have dealt with a cyber attack of some kind in the last two years.

Symantec surveyed 1,000 IT managers in the U.S. and Europe in January. In its 2009 Managed Security in the Enterprise Report, almost all respondents, 98 percent, said their organization has experienced tangible loss as a result of a cyber attack incident. Additionally, 46 percent experienced downtime and 31 percent experienced theft of customer or employee personally identifiable information. Another 25 percent were hit with theft of corporate data (See Symantec's Managed Security operations in Inside a Global SOC).

"IT departments are dealing with a perfect storm of problems when it comes to protecting their organizations: the threats are getting worse, losses are mounting," said Grant Geyer,vice president of Managed Services at Symantec.

The report also found cyber threats are growing rapidly. Nearly half of U.S. enterprises, 46 percent, said cyber threats have somewhat/significantly increased in the past two years and are expected to somewhat/significantly increase in the next two years. Most respondents, 88 percent, experienced a cyber attack in the past two years with 31 percent seeing attacks on a regular basis and 10 percent seeing a large/extremely large number of attacks.