The 2005 E-Crime Watch survey was conducted by CSO magazine in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Coordination Center. The research was conducted to unearth electronic crime fighting trends and techniques, including best practices and emerging trends.
Of those who experienced e-crimes, more than half of respondents (55%) report operational losses, 28% state financial losses and 12% declare harm to reputation as a result. Interestingly, one third (31%) of respondents do not have a formal process or system in place for tracking e-crime attempts, and 39% do not have a formalized plan outlining policies and procedures for reporting and responding to e-crimes, demonstrating room for improvement.
The top technologies used to combat e-crime are firewalls and automated virus scanning used by 99% of respondents, followed by physical security systems (94%), spyware/adware detection soft- ware (93%), intrusion detection systems (91%) and manual patch management (90%). For the second year in a row, manual patch management, a common strategy in use, is rated by respondents as the single least effective technology (26%).
