Cyber Crime is a Real Business Issue

A recent report released by Finjan highlights that cyber crime is a growing concern for businesses of all sizes. Ninety one percent of 1,387 IT managers surveyed consider cyber crime as a major risk to their business with 73% claiming data theft is more worrying than downtime or malware infection. What is even more interesting is that 25% of those surveyed admitted to having been the victims of cyber crime.

The fact that 1 in 4 companies have been a victim of cyber crime is something that should concern us all. Remember no company exists in isolation and we depend on our customers, partners and vendors to enable our companies to survive. So even if your company has not been the direct victim of cyber crime what exposure do you have with any other companies you have close ties with? Have you clarified in contracts and SLAs who is responsible for certain areas of information security and more to the point what disclosure mechanisms have you in place in the event that one of your partners or vendors is the victim of cyber crime?

Maybe you should take some time to reflect on how integrated other companies and perhaps review your incident response plan to see how best to react in the event of one of them, or indeed you, becomes the victim of cyber crime.