Half of UK media firms are victims of security breaches

Deloitte report shows that 50 per cent of threats come from within

More than a half of UK media, telecoms and technology firms suffered security breaches in the last year, according to a report from Deloitte.

The survey also showed that 50 per cent of attacks came from within the business and resulted in large financial losses.

The report by Deloitte says that many firms are overlooking the internal threats, such as fraud, employee misconduct and human errors. The growth of portable media devices, such as memory sticks and iPods is also fuelling this growth, the report says.

'The value of intellectual property is so intrinsically linked to the value of an organisation within the media and telecoms industries that you would think they would have woken up to these threats by now,' said James Alexander, technology director at Deloitte.

Some 83 per cent of media, telecoms and technology firms said they were concerned about the risk of employee misconduct affecting IT systems.

The report said that companies reliant on selling digital information and content were particularly at risk, as they could be attacked by distributed denial of service attacks.

Mike Maddison, leader of Deloitte’s security and privacy services division adds that media firms are not doing enough to ensure continuity of their business.

'It has moved from it not really being an issue to the industry becoming a target. A few years ago the online gaming industry was attacked by denial of service and this could spread,' said Maddison.

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