The frequency and the cost of cyber attacks are rising for US businesses and the pandemic is continuing to have lasting effects on the cyber security landscape, according to the specialist insurer Hiscox.
Hiscox’ s annual Cyber Readiness report, which gauges businesses’ preparedness to combat cyber incidents and breaches, surveyed over 5,000 professionals responsible for their company’s cyber security from the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland.
Findings specific to the more than 900 US professionals surveyed showed that US businesses are more concerned about cyber attacks (46%), than the pandemic (43%), or skills shortages (38%).
The survey results indicate that in the past year, there has been a 7% increase in cyber attacks on US businesses. To date, roughly half of all US businesses (47%) have suffered an attack in the past 12 months.
The median cost of an attack as of 2022 is $18,000, up from $10,000 in 2021. The US has also borne a generally higher cost from cyber attacks, with 40% of those suffering attacks incurring costs of $25,000 or more. The most common point of entry was a corporate server in the cloud.
Despite remote working nearly halving from 62% of the workforce in 2021, to 39% of the workforce by 2022, total IT spending has risen from $11.5m in 2021, to $24.2m in 2022.
The US had the highest cyber maturity score of 3.05 compared to the average of 2.94. Nonetheless, US companies were the most likely to pay a ransom to recover data, with 84% of companies that experienced a ransomware attack paying up.
The number of US businesses that have a standalone cyber insurance policy remained stable at 34%, in comparison to the number of businesses without a policy or any plan to purchase one, which dropped from 18% in 2021 to 12% in 2022. M