Media Release

Security intelligence solutions key to mitigating impact

SYDNEY, Australia, Oct. 10 2012 — HP today unveiled new research indicating that the cost and frequency of cybercrime have both continued to rise for the third straight year.

According to the first annual study of Australian companies, cyberattacks are becoming common occurrences with companies experiencing 40 successful attacks per week or more than 1.2 successful attacks per organisation per week.⁽¹⁾

Conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by HP, the 2012 Cost of Cyber Crime Study found that the average annualised cost of cybercrime incurred by a benchmark sample of Australian organisations was AUD $3.2 million per year, with a range of AUD $350,000 to AUD $10.9 million.

“Organisations are spending increasing amounts of time, money and energy responding to cyberattacks at levels that will soon become unsustainable,” said Chris Poulos, vice president, Enterprise Security Products, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. “There is clear evidence to show that the deployment of advanced security intelligence solutions helps to substantially reduce the cost, frequency and impact of these attacks.”

The most costly cybercrimes continue to be those caused by denial of services, malicious insiders and web-based attacks. When combined, these account for more than 60 percent of annual cybercrime costs per organisation.

Additional key findings include:

• Disruption to business processes and revenue losses represent the highest external costs. When a cyberattack occurs, business process losses account for 41 percent of total external costs. In addition, costs associated with revenue losses and theft of information assets represents 54 percent of external costs
• Deploying advanced security intelligence solutions can mitigate the impact of cyberattacks. Organisations that deployed security information and event management (SIEM) solutions realised a cost savings of nearly AUD $494,000 per year. As a result, these organisations experienced a substantially lower cost of recovery, detection and containment than organisations that had not deployed SIEM solutions.

• Cyberattacks can be costly if not resolved quickly. The average time to resolve a cyberattack is 21 days, but it can take more than 40 days according to this year’s study. The average cost incurred during this 21-day period was AUD $183,479.
• Recovery and detection remain the most costly internal activities associated with cybercrime. On an annual basis, these activities account for more than half of the total internal cost, with productivity losses and direct labour representing the majority of the total.

“The purpose of this benchmark research is to quantify the economic impact of cyberattacks and observe cost trends over time,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. “We believe a better understanding of the cost of cybercrime will assist organisations in determining the appropriate amount of investment and resources needed to prevent or mitigate the devastating consequences of an attack.”

In conjunction with this study, cybercrime cost studies were also conducted in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom along with the third annual cybercrime cost study of U.S. companies. HP is hosting a series of webinars highlighting the findings from these studies, with the Australian-focused webinar taking place Oct. 25. Additional information about this webinar, and those taking place in other regions, is available at www.hpenterprisesecurity.com/ponemon-cost-of-cyber-crime/.

HP is changing the enterprise security landscape with the HP Security Intelligence platform, which uniquely leverages advanced threat research and powerful correlation of security events and vulnerabilities to deliver security intelligence spanning IT operations, applications and infrastructure.

Additional information about HP Enterprise Security Solutions is available at www.hpenterprisesecurity.com/solutions.

HP’s premier Europe, Middle East and Africa client event, HP Discover, takes place Dec. 4-6 in Frankfurt, Germany.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.au.