Ninety per cent of Canadian businesses targeted by hackers last year, says study

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – As many as nine in 10 Canadian businesses suffered at least one cyber security breach last year.

Theo Van Wyk with Scalar Decisions, which backed the study, says a lot of information was compromised.

“Forty-seven per cent of the attacks involved sensitive data being lost. That’s a combination of either the data being destroyed through a form of ransom ware or of the data actually being lost or exposed,” he explains.

Van Wyk says most firms are not well-prepared for the latest types attacks. “We found that only about one third is prepared to respond or feel confident in their ability to respond to these attacks.”

He says a majority of companies don’t train employees to properly identify cyber scams such as phishing or click-jacking, which is when a hacker hijacks your browser session.

The study finds the average company spends $3.7 million in direct and indirect costs to recover from security breaches.

The data is based on survey responses from 420 people with on-the-job responsibility for cyber security in their organizations.

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