Security firm McAfee reports that there are 387 new “security threats” every minute – and corporate America isn’t keeping up its defenses against hackers as executives confess in a survey from Duke University.
Not a day goes by, it seems, without some major company or even the federal government reporting that networks have been hacked. The Duke survey published Friday shows just how wide spread hacking is: More than 80 percent of U.S. businesses have been hit.
The situation is even worse at small- and medium-sized businesses with 85 percent of companies numbering less than 1,000 employees confessing to having been hit.
And the problem is not limited to the U.S.
Some 85 percent of companies across the Atlantic and Pacific as well as south of the Rio Grande also have been hit.
The results of the survey were released Friday after news broke Thursday about the huge hack of the U.S. government.
Smaller companies are at greater risks because they have fewer resources to devote to network security measures, Duke says in its survey of chief financial officers and other executives. The survey covers a variety of economic and business topics and is conducted quarterly in conjunction with CFO Magazine.
“Corporate America is an easy mark for hackers as we are repeatedly reminded in the news,” said John Graham, the director of the survey and a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “However, it is not just big firms like Target that are being hit – 85 percent of smaller firms are also under siege. No one appears safe. The situation may even be worse than reported because many firms might not even realize that they have been attacked.”
According to the survey, smaller firms “are only about half as likely as large firms to attempt a ‘friendly hack’ into their own systems, to hire new data security staff or to require data security training for employees.”
