THE AVERAGE COST of a single cyber-crime in Ireland is €135,000, a new report has said.

The Irish Information Security and Cybercrime Survey, released this week by Deloitte and EMC, said that the crimes cost Irish companies an average of 2.7 per cent of annual turnover.

Of the businesses surveyed, most had an annual turnover in excess of €500 million.

Nearly half of businesses surveyed rated their organisations’ overall readiness to deal with cybercrime as fair to poor, with the clean-up and remediation of the crimes costing nearly €30,000.

Jared Carstensen of the Enterprise Risk Services section at Deloitte said that the evolving nature of cybercrime meant businesses needed to be vigilant.

“The threat landscape is evolving at a rapid rate.

That is a major development and one that we see companies are struggling to adapt to.

According to the report, 19 per cent of detected crimes were classified as hacking, 14 per cent of companies had suffered a denial of service and 12 per cent of breaches were down to malware infections.

EMC’s director for Ireland Jason Ward said that cybercriminals were rapidly changing the nature of their attacks.

“Cybercriminals are becoming much more advanced and intelligent,” said Ward.

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