Nearly half of the security executives at major global companies expect significant budget increases in the coming year, anticipating that economic and social disruptions may lead to more cases of theft, fraud, and sensitive data leaks.
A survey of 1,775 top security officials in 30 countries conducted by American security and staffing company “Allied Universal” found that their companies lost over a trillion dollars in revenue in 2022 due to incidents unrelated to cybersecurity, similar to the financial impact of high-profile cyberattacks.
The survey showed that companies are losing luxury goods and intellectual property internally to employees and externally, with North America being heavily affected.
The security management budgets for companies in the survey accounted for around $660 billion in 2022, or 3.3% of their global revenues.
When asked about budget expectations for the coming year, 46% said budgets would “increase significantly.” This is likely to further add to the rising costs faced by companies worldwide.
The CEO of “Allied Universal” told Reuters, “While many instances of fraud, forgery, and intellectual property loss were financially motivated, some internal leaks of sensitive information were due to social reasons.”
He added, “There’s this sort of social or social-driven or political-driven kind of impact where bad actors are present either to harm the company or to impact it socially and politically.”
The report aims to study the cost and size of security breaches and the driving factors behind them.
Economic disruptions caused by rising inflation, deteriorating living standards, as well as climate change and social disruptions, were identified as issues that could lead to security breaches.
In North America, 41% of respondents said they experienced copyright infringements by employees or contractors, while 32% lost their physical properties to external parties.
Examples of losses include the theft of luxury goods in the technology and retail sectors, while the pharmaceutical sector suffered from counterfeiting, data centers were also considered vulnerable, either through power outages or if a security breach was tied to a cyberattack.
When asked about future spending, 42% of respondents said they plan to invest in artificial intelligence and AI-supported monitoring to detect threats more rapidly.”
