The CSI Computer Crime and Security Survey - Essay Example

The report cited several important findings of the 2008 survey. First, financial fraud still constitutes the largest and most expensive cybercrime and security incidents. Here, it was found that an average of $500,000 was lost to those who have experienced fraud.

Secondly, virus incidents still dominate the computing and networking community. The report, for instance, found that 49 percent of the respondents have experienced it for the past year. Then there is also the case of bots and malware, which costs organizations around $350,000 to eliminate.

Other cases of threats include theft of hardware such as laptops and mobile devices and insider abuse of networks, breaches in security such as unauthorized access, website defacement, system penetration, password sniffing, and sabotage.

The findings of the survey, compared to that of last year, reflected a downward trend in crimes and attacks on computer security. This could be attributed to the increase in security efforts of organizations. The study found that at least 68 percent of organizations have security in place; 18 percent are developing theirs; while only one percent does not have a security policy. Furthermore, the IT security budget still constitutes a significant share of the security budget for organizations in 2008.

In regard to solving cybercrimes, the CSI survey reported that while most organizations attempt to identify the perpetrators, only 27 percent report the incidents to law enforcement agency or has been referred to legal counsel. In addition, organizations are also more averse to being involved in information sharing in order to solve computer and networking threats.

According to the survey, the future computing and networking problems, as with the past two years, still concern issues about viruses, malware, security, and legal issues. The CSI, in its conclusion, identified two kinds of threats that must be addressed: the actual threats and the developing threats. These threats, the report stressed, must be addressed as we move to a more service-oriented Web.