Data breaches cost global businesses $2 trillion a year

Businesses around the world have lost trillions of dollars.
(Image credit: iStock)

About one-third of cyberattacks against corporations are successful, according to a report from consulting firm Accenture, with large firms facing more than 100 targeted attacks every year. Nonetheless, security heads at the more than 2,000 large companies surveyed are still "unaccountably confident in their security strategies."

More than half of survey respondents said attacks came from internal security breaches, but most defensive efforts focused on protecting against external attacks. The breaches sometimes took months to detect — 17 percent of companies said they discovered attacks "within a year" or longer — and 98 percent of intrusions were reported by employees outside the security team.

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Kelly Gonsalves

Kelly Gonsalves is a sex and culture writer exploring love, lust, identity, and feminism. Her work has appeared at Bustle, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and more, and she previously worked as an associate editor for The Week. She's obsessed with badass ladies doing badass things, wellness movements, and very bad rom-coms.