Global businesses expend $400b on cybercrime fallouts

• One million new Malware threats created
• Nigeria spends $232m on unlicensed softwares

Expenses incurred by businesses across the globe as a result of various cyber attack fallouts in 2015 have been estimated to worth over $400 billion.

This is even as it has been disclosed that about one million new malwares have been created and unleashed on the global business landscape in the last eight months.

According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in its Global Software Survey, May 2016, titled: ‘Seizing Opportunity through License Compliance’ a copy obtained by The Guardian, while it noted that software provides the essential launch pad for creativity across numerous industries and human endeavors, through transformational innovations such as apps and cloud computing, it supplies the mechanism through which innovative thinkers are delivering sweeping benefits that touch billions of lives every day.

BSA, a trade group established by Microsoft Corporation in 1988, representing a number of the world’s largest software makers and headquartered in Washington D.C, observed that an important corollary associated with the growth and ubiquity of software is that cyber security is a top concern for businesses and organizations around the globe, and for good reasons, about 430 million new pieces of malware were discovered in 2015, up 36 per cent from 2014.

The survey noted that Cyber-security threats are growing, as evidenced by the findings of Symantec in its most recent Internet Security Threat Report, which disclosed that more than one million new threats were created each day in 2015. It added that ransomware grew by 35 per cent in the same period.

According to it, 65 per cent of all targeted attacks in 2015 struck small- and medium-sized organizations. These organizations, according to it have fewer resources and many haven’t adopted best practices.

“And these attacks are expensive. A successful cyberattack on average costs an organization $11 million, according to industry estimates. In the aggregate, IDC estimates that organizations spent more than $400 billion last year alone responding to the fallout from cyberattacks in 2015”, BSA stated.

Furthermore, the Software Alliance informed that organizations experienced some form of malware attacks every seven minutes. It stressed that in 2015 more than half a billion personal information records were stolen or lost through data breaches.

According to the report, which canvassed more awareness among consumers, IT managers, and enterprise PC users, it painted a picture of a global community well aware of the cybersecurity dangers posed by unlicensed software, which enterprises continued to use at an alarming rate.

The survey observed that although trends have improved marginally, 39 per cent of software installed on PCs around the world in 2015 was not properly licensed, representing only a modest decrease from 43 per cent in BSA’s previous global study in 2013.

In Africa, BSA put adoption of unlicensed software in Nigeria at 80 per cent penetration valued at $232 million. South Africa with 33 per cent penetration is valued at $274 million. Cameroun has 82 per cent penetration at $21 million, while Algeria with 83 per cent penetration valued at $84 million.

In Europe, Armenia and Maldov have 86 per cent penetration each valued at $18 million and $36 million respectively. Venezuela topped America with 88 per cent penetration valued at $402 million for the year 2015.

A key component of the BSA Global Software Survey is a global survey of more than 20,000 home and enterprise PC users, conducted by IDC in early 2016. The survey was conducted online or by phone in 32 markets that make up a globally representative sample of geographies, levels of IT sophistication, and geographic and cultural diversity. In addition, a parallel survey was carried out among 2,200 IT managers in 22 countries.

BSA observed that around the world, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) recognized that avoiding security threats associated with unlicensed software is a critical reason for ensuring the software running in their networks is legitimate and fully licensed.

It stressed that across every region in the world, those same CIOs also said their highest concern was loss of data associated with such a security incident.