More than half of U.S. businesses have experienced a cyber attack in the past year, according to a survey of executives released by Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co. on Thursday.
A total of 53% of the 403 executives surveyed reported an attack, according to the online survey commissioned by the Hartford, Connecticut-based Munich Reinsurance Co. unit, which was conducted by Utica, New York-based Zogby Analytics.
Of those businesses, 72% spent more than $5,000 to investigate each cyber attack, restore or replace software and hardware and deal with other consequences, according to the survey.
A total of 38% spent more than $50,000 to respond, while 10% spent $100,000 to $250,000 and 7% spent more than $250,000, according to the survey.
The most common consequence of the cyber attacks was data loss, which was cited by 60%, followed by business interruption, which was cited by 55%.
According to the survey, most common types of cyber attacks were malware, cited by 53%, followed by viruses, 51%; distributed denial of service attacks, 35%; ransomware, 29%; cyber extortion, 25%; and social engineering, 13%.
A total of 61% of the respondents purchased or increased their level of insurance coverage over the past year, with 56% of them purchasing cyber insurance for the first time, according to the survey.
(Reuters) — Equifax Inc., a provider of consumer credit scores, said on Thursday that personal details of as many as 143 million U.S. consumers were accessed by hackers between mid-May and July, in what could be one of the largest data breaches in the United States.