Ceaselessly, with no end in sight despite outlays that amount to a tax on doing business, the decades-long struggle against malware drags on.
Today, around 5 percent of the average IT budget is devoted to security, estimates John Pescatore, a director at the SANS Technology Institute. Cybercrime (including malicious insider attacks and theft of devices) costs U.S. corporations an average of $11.6 million yearly, according to an October 2013 study by the Ponemon Institute that was sponsored by HP Enterprise Security. This cost represents a 23 percent increase over last year's average of $8.9 million per company.