Cybersecurity Issues Growing, Says PricewaterhouseCoopers, Kaspersky Lab in Separate Reports

Online security breaches in 2014 increased by 48 percent from 2013, said a study released by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was based on responses from 9,700 industry executives in 154 countries, it said, 35 percent from North America. Respondents said they had 42.8 million security breaches in 2014, or 117,339 attacks per day, it said. The study included “only the total incidents detected and reported,” it said. “The number of respondents reporting losses of $20 million or more almost doubled over 2013.” A separate survey, also released Monday from Kaspersky Lab, said 94 percent of companies had cybersecurity issues in 2014, a 3 percentage point increase from last year. Kaspersky partnered with B2B International on the survey, which covered 3,900 respondents from companies of all sizes in 27 countries, it said. The survey was done from April 2013 to May 2014, it said. The average cost of one data security incident was estimated to be $720,000, it said. Thirty-eight percent of companies said that “protection of confidential data against leakages” is their top priority, it said. Twelve percent of companies were the victims of targeted data security attacks, up from 9 percent last year, it said.