North American businesses suffer twice as many cyber attacks

A new report from Kaspersky Lab finds that businesses in North America are significantly less protected against cyberattacks compared to those worldwide.

According to the study 20 percent of global enterprises suffered four or more data breaches in the past year, while 44 percent of North American businesses suffered a similar number of attacks.

Two of the top causes of serious data breaches are careless or uninformed employee actions (59 percent) and phishing or social engineering (56 percent). The survey shows that cybercriminals are successfully hacking their way into corporations through uninformed employees.

In addition the results reveal that 52 percent of organizations in North America face challenges understanding how to address mobile security threats, such as inappropriate usage or sharing of data.

"The survey results indicate the need for a different view on the growing complexity of cyberthreats," says Veniamin Levtsov, vice president, enterprise business at Kaspersky Lab. "The key point here is that threats are not necessarily getting more sophisticated. It's the growing attack surface that requires more diverse set of protection methods. This makes matters even more complicated for IT security departments. The most important finding is the companies' points of vulnerability: threats like employee carelessness and data exposure due to inappropriate sharing of device theft. Such challenges cannot be addressed by a technology or algorithm, instead they require better employee awareness and regular training".

You can find out more in the full report which is available from the Kaspersky Lab site. There's also a summary of the findings as an infographic below.

Photo credit: arda savasciogullari / Shutterstock