A Third of UK Businesses Hacked; IT Managers Un-phased

A survey of UK firms shows that approximately a third of companies have suffered hacks on their Web sites.

The figure was gathered through a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study recently published on the British IT industry Web site Vunet.com. The story, by Emma Nash is entitled Survey Uncovers False Sense of Data Security (available here: http://www.vnunet.com/News/1153790)

Despite the rash of attacks, the research suggests that three out of four firms are confident their security measures, which largely consist of firewalls, can fend off hackers.

That may be because only a bare four percent of attacks recorded by respondents managed to breech target companies’ defenses, the survey found.

The authors, however, were less optimistic about the dangers posed by hackers.

“The survey findings point to a real concern that businesses without the right monitoring information and intrusion prevention processes in place may have a false level of comfort,” PwC’s study director, Andrew Beard, told Vunet in the story. “Scanning and hacking activity may not be detected until it is too late to react.”

PwC is expected to release the full results of the study at the London InfoSecurity conference next month.