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Over half of US businesses have been hacked: Survey

Posted On: Sep. 28, 2017 2:43 PM CST

Over half of US businesses have been hacked: Survey

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.