The theft of trade secrets and customer information cost companies an average of US$2 million each last year, according to research conducted by security software maker Symantec Corp.
In a survey of 2,100 information-technology executives worldwide, 75 percent of respondents reported cyber attacks last year. Most intrusions were aimed at stealing a company’s intellectual property, such as product designs, according to the study released on Monday.
“We can expect to see companies going out of business because their intellectual property is stolen,” Maureen Kelly, a senior director of product marketing, said in an interview. “For some, this is a matter of life or death.”
Protecting corporate data has become more difficult, Mountain View, California-based Symantec said. Businesses coped with the recession by trimming staff to handle security, while hackers have become more skillful. Last month, Google Inc said it and at least 20 other companies had suffered a series of “highly sophisticated” online attacks originating in China.
Similar attacks have been carried out for at least 18 months on about 100 companies, a security expert who asked not to be identified said last week.
In many cases, hackers have switched their attentions to stealing trade secrets, said Symantec, the No. 1 maker of security software.
“While hackers are still looking for customer data, like credit card information, they are now going more for industrial espionage and counterfeiting,” Kelly said in an interview.
“They are also more specialized — with one person to break in, another to get the data, a third to install the software to steal information, and a fourth to encrypt it and distribute it,” she said.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said on Monday it had notified nearly 100 companies and organizations of data breaches involving personal information about customers or employees.
The FTC declined to identify the companies or organizations involved, but said they were both “private and public entities, including schools and local governments.”
The companies and organizations ranged in size from “businesses with as few as eight employees to publicly held corporations employing tens of thousands,” the FTC said in a statement.
It said sensitive data about customers and employees had been shared from the computer networks of the companies and organizations and made available on Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks.
The information was accessible to “any users of those networks, who could use it to commit identity theft or fraud,” the FTC said.
“Unfortunately, companies and institutions of all sizes are vulnerable to serious P2P-related breaches, placing consumers’ sensitive information at risk,” FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said.
“For example, we found health-related information, financial records and driver’s license and social security numbers — the kind of information that could lead to identity theft,” Leibowitz said.
“Companies should take a hard look at their systems to ensure that there are no unauthorized P2P file-sharing programs and that authorized programs are properly configured and secure,” he said.
“Just as important, companies that distribute P2P programs, for their part, should ensure that their software design does not contribute to inadvertent file sharing,” he said.
The FTC, in the notification letters to the companies and organizations, urged them to review their security practices “to ensure that they are reasonable, appropriate and in compliance with the law.”
“It is your responsibility to protect such information from unauthorized access, including taking steps to control the use of P2P software on your own networks and those of your service providers,” the letters said.
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