White Papers for Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC)

Counting the Cost of Internet Email Security Breaches

MessageLabs

The rapidly growing, fast moving and constantly changing threat posed by Internet based e-mail has altered the traditional view that ‘insiders’ cause the majority of security incidents.

Today, roughly two-thirds of security incidents in small companies are external. Internet e-mail usage is now commonplace with nine of ten companies providing staff with Internet access. Despite this, it is a staggering fact that, on average, companies only spend 3% of their IT budget on security – well below the 5% - 10% benchmark level.

When it comes to counting the costs related to security breaches, sixty-six percent of most incidents are fixed in less than one man-day, however, the other third involved significant costs. Some small companies had breaches that involved more than 50 man-days to address. Yet despite this impact on the bottom-line, under half of businesses evaluate their return on investment on security spend.

This paper sets out the business case of managing the financial risk of using Internet e-mail. The paper has drawn on case studies from four MessageLabs clients – The Elizabeth Finn Trust, Close Premium Finance, Filofax and Audio Partnership.

With the help and evidence from these four clients, we have set down the financial impact of security breaches related to Internet e-mail – we are grateful to the four clients for their candid help. In addition to describing the threat and costing the financial impact of threat becoming a real incident, we have articulated how MessageLabs can prevent such security breaches (and their subsequent impact) from occurring. It was tempting to categorize the financial cost as tangible and intangible.

View the White Paper

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