Cybercrime Fallouts Cost Global Businesses $400billion

According to the Business Software Alliance, BSA, in its Global Software Survey, May 2016, titled: ‘Seizing Opportunity through License Compliance’, while it noted that software provides the essential launch pad for creativity across numerous industries and human endeavors, through transformational innovations such as apps and cloud computing, it supplies the mechanism through which innovative thinkers are delivering sweeping benefits that touch billions of lives every day.

BSA, a trade group established by Microsoft Corporation in 1988, representing a number of the world’s largest software makers and headquartered in Washington D.C, observed that an important corollary associated with the growth and ubiquity of software is that cyber security is a top concern for businesses and organisations around the globe, and for good reasons, about 430 million new pieces of malware were discovered in 2015, up 36 per cent from 2014.

The survey revealed that Cyber-security threats are growing, as evidenced by the findings of Symantec in its most recent Internet Security Threat Report, which disclosed that more than one million new threats were created each day in 2015. It added that ransomware grew by 35 per cent in the same period.

According to it, 65 per cent of all targeted attacks in 2015 struck small- and medium-sized organizations. These organizations, according to it have fewer resources and many haven’t adopted best practices.

“And these attacks are expensive. A successful cyberattack on average costs an organization $11 million, according to industry estimates. In the aggregate, IDC estimates that organizations spent more than $400 billion last year alone responding to the fallout from cyberattacks in 2015”, BSA stated.

Furthermore, the Software Alliance informed that organizations experienced some form of malware attacks every seven minutes. It stressed that in 2015 more than half a billion personal information records were stolen or lost through data breaches.

In Africa, BSA put adoption of unlicensed software in Nigeria at 80 per cent penetration valued at $232 million. South Africa with 33 per cent penetration is valued at $274 million. Cameroun has 82 per cent penetration at $21 million, while Algeria with 83 per cent penetration valued at $84 million.

In Europe, Armenia and Maldov have 86 per cent penetration each valued at $18 million and $36 million respectively. Venezuela topped America with 88 per cent penetration valued at $402 million for the year 2015.