High-end cybercriminals have shifted from targeting credit cards and other personal data to the intellectual capital of large corporations, according to a new study from McAfee and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
This includes trade secrets and product planning documents, according to the report, which was based on a survey more than 1,000 senior IT decision makers in the U.S., UK, Japan, China, India, Brazil and the Middle East.
To save money, companies are looking to store and process intellectual property abroad, the study found. Most perceived China, Russia, and Pakistan to be the least safe for data storage. The U.S., UK, and Germany were perceived as the safest.
If there is an incident, however, you might not known about it. Fifty percent of respondents have decided not to investigate an incident because of the cost of investigation, thereby ensuring that there will be no remediation of the problems that caused the breach. Only 30 percent of organizations reported all data breaches.
When it comes to deciding where to store data, meanwhile, companies looked to reporting laws.
Another point from the study is that the distinction between inside and outside attacks is blurring. Many attacks are, in fact, performed by outsiders using stolen credentials. All of this makes the security position of large companies and the data they hold quite murky, with criminals taking advantage of the shaky data security.
The full study is available on McAfee's Web site (PDF).