29 Jan 2009

Security breaches "cost firms $1 trillion"

Businesses are losing $1 trillion (£700 billion) globally because of security lapses and data thieves, according to IT specialists.

A survey of 800 chief information officers conducted by security experts McAfee found that the average company has over $12 million of intellectual property stored overseas.

Dave DeWalt, chief executive officer of McAfee, says that "insidious" forms of malware are infiltrating networks and leading to several of the breaches.

"In many cases the scale as well as the sophistication was very alarming," he tells Reuters.

The results of the report are scheduled to be released today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which is running from January 28th to February 1st.

Companies were recently offered advice on IT security management by specialist Graham Cluley, of Scopos, who advised staff suffering failed login attempts on an account to "block that account from being accessed at all for the next 15 minutes".