HP report finds cyber crime costs rising

FLOGGER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP has warned businesses that the average cost of cybercrime has risen to $5.9m.

HP which presumably is sickened by these dreadful attacks on business, currently makes some $7bn every quarter out of its enterprise printer business, so perhaps it is rather keen on keeping business coffers nice and full.

"The median annualised cost of cybercrime incurred by a benchmark sample of organisations was $5.9 million per year," said the firm in a statement designed to shock.

"This represents an increase of 56 per cent from the median cost reported in the inaugural study published in July 2010."

The average time to resolve a cyberattack is 18 days, according to HP, and each incident has an average cost of nearly $416,000.

What is probably more shocking is what these firms are spending on the HP ink, and the associated hardware, but hey, that's not what HP wants to talk about today. Rather, it wants to talk about cyber attacks. Possibly because it has something to sell here, too.

"Instances of cybercrime have continued to increase in both frequency and sophistication, with the potential impact to an organisation's financial health becoming more substantial," said Tom Reilly, VP and general manager of enterprise security at HP.

"Organisations in the most targeted industries are reducing the impact by leveraging security and risk management technologies, which is grounds for optimism in what continues to be a fierce fight against cybercrime."

Ah, whatever. µ