Most firms expect cyber attacks within a year

Two out of three businesses in the UK expect to be victims of cyber crime within 12 months, with some industry experts asking whether company security defences are  sufficiently equipped.

In a survey of 250 decision-makers in IT companies with over 250 members of staff, Bit9 + Carbon Black discovered that 64 per cent of those who responded believe their business will experience some form of cyber attack in the next year. About 32 per cent believe they have already experienced attacks in the previous year.

However, while such findings are not likely to be a shock due to the volume of worldwide data breaches, a potentially larger issue was the discovery that 49 per cent of respondents were unaware whether they had suffered a breach or not. Further, 61 per cent said their ability to identify suspicious behaviour was average at best.

Bunmi Sowande, technical consultant for F-Secure, spoke to ScMagazineUK.com about the possibility of businesses experiencing multiple attacks, commenting:

“If the original hack went undiscovered, then [it’s] very likely. Hackers tend to leave some backdoors installed so they can come back if the data extracted the first time turned out to be very valuable.”

The concern expressed by industry insiders can be relieved by businesses paying more attention to their cyber defence systems. By placing more of an emphasis on IT security recruitment, company bosses may still be a victim of an attack – but will be far better placed to respond. If they heed their own warning, we should expect to see more cyber security jobs being filled in the not-too-distant future.