By Steve Morgan, Forbes, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Dec. 15, 2015 – There’s a showdown going down between a global network of cyber criminals and the world’s largest corporations, governments and cybersecurity companies. The British insurance company Lloyd’s estimates that cyber attacks cost businesses as much as $400 billion a year, which includes direct damage plus post-attack disruption to the normal course of business. Some vendor and media forecasts put the cybercrime figure as high as $500 billion and more.
The banking and financial services sector has been the prime target of cyber criminals over the last five years, followed by IT/telecom, defense, and the oil and gas sector, according to TechSci Research, an IT market intelligence firm. Infosecurity Magazine stated in an article earlier this year that financial services firms are hit by security incidents a staggering 300 times more frequently than businesses in other industries–which is natural, since that’s where the money is.
The biggest U.S. banks are responding to the cyber crime epidemic with some of the biggest security budgets. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. expects its cybersecurity spending to be around $500 million in 2016. That figure is more than double the $250 million it spent on cybersecurity in 2014.
