We all know that data theft, credit card theft, etc. And we know that spyware, viruses, Trojans and other cyber nasties are a threat. But have we been underestimating the real effect?

As regular readers will know, I’m not a fan of Norton/Symantec or McAfee anti-malware products. I believe you can do a lot better for less money and consequently experience far fewer “system problems”. However, there is no disputing the fact that the big companies like those two certainly have the resources necessary to conduct, collate and analyze large global surveys. Hence they are certainly worth listening to when they publish such information.

In January of this year Symantec conducted a survey of 2,100 businesses and government agencies located in 27 different countries, and the revelations concerning the extent of data theft were quite sobering.

Now, the part of the survey I’m interested in asked those entities if they had ever suffered a cyber loss in the preceding 12 months.

Guess how many replied in the affirmative?

100% !!!

Yes, every single one of those 2,100 businesses or government agencies had been the victims of some sort of data loss: credit card info, financial data, intellectual property theft, and so on.

What is loss?

Loss of data is very different to loss of a physical item. If your actual physical credit card is lost or stolen, then it’s gone and that’s it. At the latest you’ll know that it’s missing the next time you go to use it.

But if someone steals the information about that credit card — your name, card number and pin — you still have the card itself and you’ll probably be none the wiser until your next statement arrives with a few thousand dollars missing.

Now, getting back to that survey…

The thing you need to keep in mind here is that pretty much all of those organizations have IT departments staffed by qualified people who are constantly on the watch for any sort of incursion. If they weren’t on constant watch for such things then there would be many instances of loss/theft that would go unnoticed, at least for a time.

For example, the survey quotes an IT project manager at a federal agency as saying “You can sit and watch our monitors and see people try to attack us”. It is an indisputable fact that right across the globe IT security people are seeing new viruses, spyware and back-doors EVERY SINGLE DAY.

What I’m getting at here is that it’s very unlikely that you, as an individual without all those costly and sophisticated corporate resources, will have the time, capability or knowledge to be constantly monitoring for attempts at data theft.

And don’t think for a moment that you are a lesser target because you are an individual. Most data theft is completely automated, with malicious programs searching out ANY computer anywhere that they can gain access to.

Even with all their resources, 92% of the survey respondents admitted that the cyber theft they had suffered had resulted in significant costs. And if you are a business one of the most significant losses you can suffer is loss of customer trust, which inevitably leads to reduced revenue.

So if the big players with all the resources are getting hit, what are your chances?

Well, if you read this blog on a regular basis, your chances are probably at least a bit better than the average. The two-line subscription form that ensures you don’t miss any posts is at the top right of this page.

Related articles

• Symantec’s “State of Enterprise Security 2010″ report (PDF)
• Cyber attacks cost businesses an ‘average of £1.2 million’ a year
• Who lost business to cyber-weaknesses?
• Cyber security tops IT priority list
• Data Thefts Cost Firms $2 Million Each a Year