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E-crime is a serious threat, say KPMG`

Companies are not taking e-crime seriously enough suggests new research by KPMG.

Over three quarters of UK IT security professionals do not have insurance, or do not know if their organizations are insured against e-crime legal costs.

This is despite over half seeing an increase in the threat level in the last 12 months.

KPMG and AKJ Associates surveyed 200 senior security decision makers from global businesses including FTSE 100 companies.

Martin Tyley heads KPMG’s Information Security practice in the North and notes that businesses should be particularly wary following attacks across a range of industries in 2011.

He said: “First, there’s the lack of knowledge of what is available but many are also sceptical about the effectiveness of current policies and whether insurers will actually pay out against e-crime claims.”

It was discovered that a growing number of organisations were opening up new vulnerabilities by attempting to capitalise on popular new business and consumer technologies.

The use of mobiles and laptops for both business and personal use was identified as a major risk factor along with cloud and mobile computing services.

Some 41% of companies admitted lacking knowledge of where they might be open to attack and half said either had no strategy for dealing with an attack or did not know if they had a strategy.

Tyler went on to say: “The threat landscape is changing by the day and too many organisations aren’t doing enough to protect themselves.

“You need to act fast to create strategies that enable them to prevent, detect, respond and learn from attacks.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .