One in three large businesses in the UK has had their website targeted by hackers in the last year, revealed a survey from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
The biennial Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that businesses that took part in the survey reported an average of one probe each week.
Four per cent of respondents said their systems had been penetrated in the past year, four times as many as two years ago.
Key findings of the survey of some 1,000 companies included:
·Three quarters of businesses that reported system penetration rated it as their worst security incident of the year (worse than, for example, virus infections), with more than a third describing the impact as ‘very serious'
·The main concerns were not so much financial loss or service disruption, but the time spent on investigation and remedy - a quarter took between two and ten man-days of effort
·Firewalls were the main line of defence against intrusion, with more than three quarters of businesses using one, although in 50% of the cases, this was their only defence
·The larger the business, the more likely it is to have intrusion detection software
·The number of smaller companies reporting hacking attempts was relatively low but has risen significantly since the last survey in 2002; the speed of the rise is worrying given the growing dependence on websites, and
·Around half of all businesses have their websites hosted externally and so rely solely on their provider for security, yet worryingly many were unaware of what defences those providers had against attack.
The survey found that, despite the increasing number of cyber attacks, businesses remained largely satisfied about the effectiveness of defences, with 72% expressing confidence in their ability to detect or prevent security breaches.
