Data leaks cost large regional firms Dh5.5M
With the cost of cybersecurity increasing in the region, big companies in the Middle East, Turkey and South Africa paid up to $1.5 million (Dh5.5 million) for electronic data leaks from their internal systems, according to a newlyreleased study.
The report, released by Kaspersky Lab, revealed that the entities paid more than $1 million (Dh3.67 million) for incidents affecting suppliers who they share data with.
Small and medium businesses lost $141,000 (Dh517,470) when their employees used IT resources inappropriately and $118,000 (433,060) when there was an incident affecting infrastructure hosted by a third party.
The study revealed that the proportion of IT budgets spent on IT security in the regional countries is declining: 62 per cent of companies in the Middle East, Turkey and South African regions are investing in cybersecurity, which is less than last year.
The average IT security budget for enterprises dropped from 23 per cent to 19 per cent in 2017. This is a concern for businesses, especially given the fact that — unlike IT security budgets — it’s not getting cheaper to recover from security breaches. This year, large enterprises in the region paid an average $591,000 per security incident, while SMBs faced an $88,000 bill per attack.
“Overspending on cybersecurity is not the way forward. It is important for organisations to choose the right security vendor that will correctly address their cybersecurity needs. However, threats in this part of the world are moving fast and the costs associated with cyber incidents are constantly rising. It is becoming critical for organisations to invest in threat intelligence services and combine these with the most appropriate security solutions,” said Maxim Frolov, managing director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Kaspersky Lab.
— waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com