Peter A Clarke

According to a Price Waterhouse Coopers Study even though companies were improving their security risk assessment procedures and spending more on IT security, they were suffering from record levels of security breaches, with incidents double in number what they were two years ago.

The study found that when using new technologies, companies are failing to protect themselves and their information. Most users of cloud computing, it found, do not check that sensitive data stored externally is encrypted.The study found that 34% of companies are critically dependant on externally hosted software used over the internet but that just 17% of companies which host highly confidential data with an external provider ensure that data is encrypted.

Attacks on companies of all sizes have increased, with large companies “bombarded” with activity, compared to a PwC survey two years ago. It found that 62% were infected with malicious software compared to 21% two years ago; 61% have detected a significant attempt to break into their network compared to 31% two years ago; and 25% have suffered a denial of service attack, up from 11%.

The survey found that 92% of large companies encountered some kind of security incident in the last year.

The fact that confidential data stored off-site is not encrypted could be a particular worry for firms. The survey found that while only 15% of security breaches overall were classed as very or extremely serious, 45% of confidential data breaches were serious.