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It seems even though vendors are pushing their snakeoil harder than ever, the actual figures show that the money lost due to cybercrime has decreased every year for the last four years!
Perhaps people are finally getting more secure, it’s not suprising with the advent of cheaper and easier to use intrusion detection and intrusion prevention systems.
For the fourth straight year, the financial losses incurred by businesses due to incidents such as computer break-ins have fallen, according to the 2006 annual survey by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI. Robert Richardson, editorial director at the CSI, discussed the survey’s findings in a presentation at the CSI NetSec conference here Wednesday.
Respondents in the 2005 survey reported an average of $204,000 in cybercrime losses, Richardson said. This year, that’s down to $168,000, about an 18 percent drop, he added. Compared with 2004, the average loss is down 68 percent.
The threats themselves haven’t really changed, so the ‘risk landscape’ is the same. Just the monetary loss has decreased.
Most important, perhaps, the 615 U.S. CSI members who responded to this year’s survey reported fewer security incidents. Viruses, laptop theft and insider abuse of Net access are still the most reported threats, but all have decreased compared with last year.
“The danger of insiders may be somewhat overstated, according to the survey group,” Richardson said. About a third of respondents said they had no losses at all due to insider threats, another 29 percent said less than one-fifth of overall losses came from insider threats.
I would definitely put it down to consistent and more widespread use of security technologies as well as general awareness and understanding being higher. I would agree with the following statement that nowadays it’s more likely the consumers are losing more money.
The businesses have already tightened themselves up.
When it comes to cybercrime losses, consumers might be bearing the brunt of them, and they are not covered by the survey, Richardson suggested. “Consumers are the low-hanging fruit,” he said. Costs related to identity theft, for example, fall largely back onto the consumer, he added, even if it did start with a data breach at an enterprise.
So as users we must be careful too.
Source: News.com