Nearly 800 companies affected by security firm's data breach

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

The breach that targeted one of the largest security firms earlier this year placed a greater emphasis on the destruction that cyber activity can cause.

According to a recent post by security expert Brian Krebs, more than 760 organizations have been targeted with some the same resources used against the firm.

"The subtext of the story was that if this could happen to one of the largest and most integral security firms, what hope was there for organizations that aren’t focused on security?" said Krebs.

Of the businesses hit by the breach, nearly 20 percent are Fortune 100 companies, according to Krebs' report.

With the devastation security breaches can have on an organizations' infrastructure, some officials believe their businesses would fail to recover if an attack penetrated their defenses.

According to a recent study conducted by Imago Techmedia for the IP EXPO, 18 percent of IT officials said their companies may not survive a massive data security breach. Of those surveyed, nearly three-quarters indicated that greater collaboration between departments could improve their security against cyber attacks.