$1,200 Per Employee – Annual Cost Of Cyber Threats

Big businesses are spending almost $1,200 a year, per employee, to protect themselves from cyber-attacks, says a news study.

Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are moving beyond traditional targets – email and internet – to apps and other online services, according to a report for Israel-based cyber startup Perception Point.

Many of these new tools have only been around for a few years, according to the report, entitled The Rise of Cyber Threats Against Email, Browsers and Emerging Cloud-Based Channels.

But it says malicious incidents against these new cloud-based apps and services already occur at 60% of the frequency with which they occur on email-based services.

“Some attacks, like those involving malware installed on an endpoint, occurring on cloud collaboration apps at 87% of the frequency with which they occur on email-based services,” it says.

Organizations are paying $1,197 per employee each year to address successful cyber incidents across email services, cloud collaboration apps or services, and web browsers, the report says.

“These findings demonstrate the urgent need for organizations to find the most accurate and efficient cybersecurity solutions,” said Yoram Salinger, CEO of the threat-detection platform Perception Point.

“The rapid growth of non-email-based threats crucially underscores the need for security teams to keep up with emerging trends, especially as the modern work environment is in flux and the number of cloud-based collaboration tools that organizations rely on is only likely to expand.”

The report was based on a survey of 250 security and IT decision-makers in organizations with at least 3,000 employees, by US-based Osterman Research during June 2022.

“With cloud collaboration apps and services now complementing email as a cornerstone of any enterprise’s workflow, modern cybersecurity solutions must adapt to encompass the totality of channels and threat types,” said Michael Sampson, Senior Analyst at Osterman.