Rise in cyber security budgets

New data from a  BAE Systems Applied Intelligence survey indicates that about 60 percent of large companies across the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Australia have increased their spending on cybersecurity since last year’s Target Breach.  Industries such as banking, technology, law, and mining are now spending up to 15 percent of their entire IT budgets on security.   More than 80 percent of survey respondents expect the number of cyberattacks to rise. The loss of customer data ranked as the companies’ greatest concern, followed by the loss of trade secrets, reputational damage, and service interruption.

Nearly half of the U.S. companies in the survey said a cyberattack would cost them around $15 million, while 29 percent estimated the cost at more than $75 million. The results suggest that breaches would take an extreme financial toll on smaller companies as well.

The Target breach over the 2013 holiday season claimed 40 million customers’ credit and debit card numbers.