British Businesses More Worried About Losing Data Than Losing Money

Data breaches are becoming such a common occurrence for British businesses that many of them are no longer worried about paying out to cover a loss.

A study by Fujitsu has found that British businesses are far more concerned about the effects of losing confidential or valuable data in an attack than the financial costs of any data breach.

The report found that security breaches cost businesses an average of between £1.46m and £3.14m last year.

At risk?

However, Fujitsu found that despite these worries, business heads are often not effectively prioritising how they manage their budgets.

According to the research, which questioned 150 senior IT decision makers across the UK, security teams average at between eight to 10 people per organisation – a huge investment in people to protect the business from threats.

In addition, the research revealed that 86 percent of IT decision makers rated security as the most important to their business. Yet despite those statistics, over half of the IT decision makers surveyed spend less than a quarter of their IT budget on security.

“Any organisation, whatever the size or line of business, could be the next target of an advanced attack; so it is of utmost important for organisations to invest in the right security for their organisation,” said Andy Herrington, head of cyber professional services at Fujitsu.

“By making security decisions based on finance, rather than on the technology required, businesses are making themselves vulnerable. Looking at each phase of the cyber kill chain is one way of putting yourself in a better position against hackers.”

A recent Gemalto study found that data breaches increased by 10 percent during the first six months of this year compared to the first half of 2014. The company’s Breach Level Index found that 888 data breaches occurred in the first half of 2015, compromising 246 million records worldwide.

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