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75% of Enterprises Have Suffered Cyber Attacks, Costing $2M+ On Average

coomaria writes "OK, even allowing for the fact this comes from a newly published study (PDF) from a security company, that's still one heck of a statistic. The fact that it's Symantec, and so has access to perhaps more enterprises than most, makes it a double-heck with knobs on. Or how about this one for size: 'every enterprise, yes, 100 percent, experienced cyber losses in 2009.'"

5 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. I'm shocked by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is like the MPAA/RIAA claiming that "piracy" is costing their respective industries "billions" of dollars. Seriously - if you can't spot the conflict of interest you need to turn in your critical thinking hat.

    This is just marketing to increase sales of their "security" products. In fact if you go to the actual PDF linked to in the article it looks suspiciously like a sales brochure, presenting the "problem" and at the end showing how Symantec is the "solution".

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:I'm shocked by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They claimed it hard enough that analog HD is dead at the end of this year.

      Because they scream louder than everyone else they get all the attention.

      This screaming about how EVERYONE has suffered losses will be used to force through more draconian laws.... because nobody in the tech field is screaming back.

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      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. Re:Original report... by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can anyone tell me what a "brand-related risk" might be for security professionals

          Presumably that would be "not buying Symantec security products".

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  3. Re:Full Text by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And you might have heard on the commercial, 1 out of 4 women can't read a pregnancy test, so they made it easier to read. I'm pretty tired of advertising and mock white papers making it out like we're all stupid. Using Symantec security products won't make your business decisions smarter. What it will do is ensure that your minimum spending on security products is done with Symantec. A real white paper on security would have shown all options, and compared them to each other so you can not only make a decision to use security products and why you would do so, but which one suits your needs best.

    I think I'm at the point where if the ad, paper, or whatever describes me or other users or the demographic they are after as stupid, I will just shitcan it on principle.

  4. Define "cyber attack". And don't use average by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Connect any web server to the internet and you'll see tons of connections from botnets trying randomly to exploit various old vulnerabilities. Technically, these are attacks, though you don't need to worry about them if you're patched up.

    So is this saying anything more than 75% of enterprises have a web server?

    And the average cost is a meaningless number, since averages are swayed by outliers. If you wanted a good statistic for this, you'd use the median. Alternatively, compute the average of (cost of attack / yearly revenue).