Cybercrime cost $1 trillion last year, study

Summary: Data theft and breaches from cybercrime may have cost businesses as much as $1 trillion globally in lost intellectual property and expenditures for repairing the damage last year.

By Elinor Mills | January 29, 2009 -- 04:51 GMT (20:51 PST)

Data theft and breaches from cybercrime may have cost businesses as much as $1 trillion globally in lost intellectual property and expenditures for repairing the damage last year, according to a new study from McAfee.

McAfee made the projection based on responses to a survey of more than 800 chief information officers in the United States, UK, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil and Dubai.

The respondents estimated that they lost data worth a total of $4.6 billion and spent about $600 million cleaning up after breaches, McAfee said.

The report, entitled Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information is due to be released on Thursday at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. It also finds that developing countries spend more money on protecting intellectual property than companies in Western countries.

The ongoing recession is only increasing the security risk for corporations, respondents said, with 42 percent reporting that displaced workers were the biggest threat to sensitive information on the network.

There were some other interesting geographical-related results. More than one quarter of the respondents said they avoid storing data in China, and 47 percent of the Chinese respondents said they believed the U.S. poses the biggest security threat to their data.

Credit: Cybercrime cost firms $1 trillion globally, McAfee study says was originally published on CNET News.com.

Topics: Security, Enterprise Software, Legal

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6 comments

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trillion

Tell Obama, make laws, Presidential executive order on it, save money, oh wait, he does want to save money,

never mind :)

Monosdeja

29 January, 2009 05:30

Reply Vote

And McAfee would also tell you...............

the sky was falling as per chicken little, but we can save you..............dah what dribble..............

Linux_Lives

29 January, 2009 05:52

Reply Vote

The salmonella outbreak cost millions.

It was big news. All the major networks carried stories on it. Unfortunately the contaminated peanut butter is still making people sick because nobody bothered to identify the company responsible for the outbreak. It's just one word but if people don't hear it they won't know what's making them sick. Don't worry though, not one news organization has been prosecuted for negligent reporting... yet.

kozmcrae

29 January, 2009 09:04

Reply Vote

RE: Cybercrime cost $1 trillion last year, study

"The respondents estimated that they lost data worth a total of $4.6 billion and spent about $600 million cleaning up after breaches, McAfee said."

Well, if that makes 5.2 Billion, where is the other 995 BILLION????

scudrunner

29 January, 2009 14:09

Reply Vote

Is this the way out of the impending US budget crisis?

All those useless government workers could be running scams. The SEC guys can get Madoff's help to close the gap quickly!

tenimotsu

29 January, 2009 23:38

Reply Vote

RE: Cybercrime cost $1 trillion last year, study

"We projected our total sales last year should have been
five hundred million dollars. We actually had sales of
three million, therefore we have posted a loss of four
hundred and ninety seven million dollars. On the plus
side, we are expecting a great tax refund."