For the less than 8% of survey respondents that did report being impacted by MyDoom, the financial losses they incurred were relatively minor. About 59%, or 10, of those 17 companies that did report an impact said their financial loss was under $1,000. The remaining 7 respondents -- 41% -- said their loss was under $10,000, clearly not a catastrophic number but not pocket change, either, especially for a small business.
Of those reporting an impact from MyDoom, 47.1%, by far the highest percentage, said the virus caused interruption and/or discontinuation of electronic communications for their company.
Still, respondents to our survey indicated that their top security priority for 2004 is preventing problems that can be caused by worms and viruses so MyDoom and other high-profile viruses/worms seem to have at least heightened awareness of security. A full 42% of respondents said their top security priority is preventing problems caused by worms and viruses, while 24% selected "securing and protecting any data that relates to our customers as they transact business with us."
When they were asked to rate the importance of security relative to other IT investments and strategies in the coming year, the highest percentage of respondents -- 42% -- said it's about equally important as other IT categories including networking, productivity software and PCs and servers. The remaining respondents broke down as follows:
Still, the impact of viruses seems to be driving a fair amount of security decisions. Asked to prioritize planned security purchases this year, 36.5% of respondents said antivirus software is most important. The other responses break down in this fashion:
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
