The True Costs of Cybercrime

What Will I Learn?

Overview

UK-based organizations have low security budgets, but the high prevalence of “gray hats” drives up overall security costs dramatically.

UK-based organizations have experienced the highest level of security incidents during the last 12 months – 97 percent of the organizations surveyed have fallen victim to at least one significant security incident – but these organizations are the least likely to consider the average security threat to be “very serious”. Organizations in the UK experienced the highest incidence of phishing attacks, ransomware infections, spearphishing attacks and data breaches among the five nations we surveyed. UK-based organizations also spend the largest share of their security budgets on remediating active compromises, but security budgets in the UK are also the lowest of the five nations surveyed. However, because of a high likelihood that security professionals in the UK will also participate in cybercriminal activity – so-called “Gray Hats” – total annual security costs for UK-based organizations are the third highest among the organizations we surveyed.

Presenters