Businesses pay a significant premium to recover from a cyberattack, if virtual infrastructure is affected during the incident. Enterprises pay more than $800,000 on average to recover from a security breach, which is twice as much compared to incidents involving only physical hardware.
This is one of the key findings of a special report on the security of virtual infrastructure prepared by Kaspersky Lab, based on a worldwide survey of 5,500 companies conducted in cooperation with B2B International in 2015.
According to the report, SMBs experience the same pattern as enterprises. On average, SMBs reported damages of more than $26,000 for an attack on their physical infrastructure. However, the involvement of virtual infrastructure in a security breach drives the cost up closer to $60,000.
Virtual means mission critical
The main reason behind the additional cost for a security breach affecting virtual environments is that the majority of businesses use virtual infrastructure for their most important operations.
While an attack on physical nodes leads to the temporary loss of access to business critical information in 36% of incidents reported, this rises to 66% when a breach affects virtual servers and desktops.
Attacks affecting virtual environments also more frequently require additional budget on third-party expertise. Businesses have to request help not only from IT consultants, but also lawyers, risk management experts and others.
Sixty-two percent of companies that have already embraced virtualization platforms are likely to entrust them with their most critical business processes.
The complexity of security measures in a virtual environment, as well as an incorrect perception of the threat landscape are two additional elements that increase the cost of recovery in the virtual environment.
Kaspersky Lab’s report shows that 42% of businesses believe that security risks in virtual environments are significantly lower than in ‘physical’ environments. 45% of companies report that security management in virtual environments is perceived as a problem. Furthermore, only 27% of businesses have deployed a security solution, specifically designed for the virtual environment.
“Businesses expect that going virtual will drive down their IT spend and streamline their infrastructure,” commented Matvey Voytov, corporate products group manager, Kaspersky Lab.
“However, the survey results show us that if there is not enough attention paid to security matters in the virtual environment, expenses may exceed the benefit.”
Kaspersky Lab advises businesses to adopt customized, virtual-aware security solutions with centralised management and reporting. “The solution should have a low impact on resources, a high detection rate and the ability to spot suspicious activity right away,” noted Voytov.