For large companies, the costs associated with malware now amount to an average of more than $125,000 per month.
The costs of repairing malware attacks and corporate data leaks have increased along with employee usage of Web 2.0, and social media at work, according to a study commissioned by FaceTime Communications.
The use of social media applications is popular with more than 60 percent of all companies surveyed having eight or more these applications in use on their networks.
These applications, which introduce security and data leakage risks, are in use at 97 percent of all organizations, up from 85 percent in 2007. On average, companies said 9.3 social media applications were in use by employees on their networks.
“For all four years that FaceTime has commissioned this survey, end users have claimed they have the right to download and use whatever applications they choose to help them do their jobs,” said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management at FaceTime.
“This year’s study also reveals their social media habits have extended into the workplace and may be contributing to security and data leakage incidents,” said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management at FaceTime.
Less than 40 percent of IT respondents report monitoring and managing applications such as P2P and only 25 percent say they are securing and monitoring Web 2.0 applications.
The majority (79%) of employees use social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube) at work for business reasons and 51 percent visit social media sites at least once per day.
Close to three-quarters (73%) of IT managers report at least one security incident as a result of Internet application usage; viruses, Trojans and worms (59%) are most common, followed by spyware (57%).
“IT managers are often at odds with employees’ belief that they have the right to use whatever applications they feel they need to do their jobs, including these Internet applications that are evasive and easily circumvent existing security infrastructure,” said Cabri.
“They create potential compliance, information leakage concerns as well as introducing myriad vectors for incoming malware.”