89 percent of ANZ organisations face cyber attack

Symantec study finds 43 percent of ANZ IT executives rate security their number one issue

By Rob O’Neill, Computerworld, Auckland | Monday, 22 February 2010
Australian and New Zealand organisations are more likely to be the targeted by cyber attacks than the global average, according to new research from security software maker Symantec.

According to the company's State of Enterprise Security study for 2010, 75 percent of global organisations report such attacks while 89 percent of ANZ organisations report being targeted. However, according to a separate split of the data for New Zealand, all the organisations responding to the survey from here reported being targeted.

Thirty six percent of organisations globally and 34 percent in ANZ rated these attacks as somewhat or highly effective, while attacks cost global businesses an average of US$2 million a year.

The study is based on surveys of 2,100 enterprise CIOs, CISOs and IT managers from 27 countries conducted in January 2010. 75 responses were from New Zealand and 125 from Australia.

It also found that 42 percent of the IT executives surveyed globally and 43 percent in ANZ rate security their top issue.

Read more at Computerworld.