91% of organizations perceive cybercrime as a major business risk

Finjan announced the findings of its Web security survey of 1387 IT/Security professionals conducted during July 2008. The results reveal that an overwhelming number of respondents perceive cybercrime as a major business risk, specifically the possibility of their sensitive information such as customer, patient, and employee data being stolen by crimeware.

Finjan conducted an online survey to determine the current perception of Cybercrime and Web 2.0 risks to organizations. Respondents were asked about business risks resulting from crimeware attacks, the potential damage that successful attacks might inflict, their knowledge of being breached, their main concern with respect to data theft and loss of productivity, and about security solutions and Web 2.0 policies.

Key findings from the survey:

• 91% of all respondents stated that they perceive cybercrime as a major business risk (e.g. loss of customers, brand name damage, lawsuits etc.)
• 73% of the all responding CIOs and CSOs were more concerned about data theft (crimeware stealing their business data) than about downtime and loss of productivity due to virus infections
• The majority of the respondents (68%) indicated that their corporate intellectual property and sensitive information is at risk of data-theft
• More than half of the respondents (54%) worry about their corporate employee information being stolen
• 47% of all respondents listed theft of their corporate customer information as a major business concern
• In the banking and financial sector, 95% of the respondents perceived cybercrime as a major business risk to their organization
• Of the responding healthcare providers, 73% listed their patients’ medical records as the main potential cybercrime target
• 25% of the respondents reported that their data had been breached, with an overwhelming 42% of respondents who could not exclude the possibility of a breach
• 67% of respondents knowledgeable about web security listed real-time content inspection technology as the preferred web security solution