The US Department of Justice released information last year about a voluntary survey companies took relating to cyber crime in the work place. Slightly over 7,800 businesses responded to the National Computer Security Survey with 67% of those indicting that they had at least one cyber crime. Computer viruses were the most common type of cyber attack.

The survey measured the effects through monetary loss and system downtime. 90% of business that responded to this survey sustained a monetary loss. Over half of the loss was attributed to cyber theft. Of that total, approximately 68% of the companies that were a victim of cyber theft had a monetary loss of $10,000 or more. The startling statistic that caught my eye was that 75% of the businesses that were victimized by cyber theft said that insiders – employees, contractors, or vendors working for the business – were responsible for the crime.

Those are a lot of numbers to throw around and can sound confusing at first. Basically, slightly less that three quarters of the companies that reported cyber theft lost $10,000 or more. Three quarters of those companies that lost $10,000 or more reported that the money was stolen by an employee, contractor or vendor. So, 7,800 businesses responded to the survey. Just over 5,300 of them reported that they were the victims of cyber theft with a loss of $10,000 or more. Of those 5,300 – almost 4,000 of them attribute the theft to someone inside the organization. I don’t know if you are counting zero’s yet – but if you say an average loss was $10,000 and 4,000 people each took $10,000 – that is $40,000,000! I know that is oversimplified – but it gets my point across. Can your company afford even a fraction of that loss?

Probably the one statistic that bothered me the most was that only 50% of the businesses detecting cyber thefts reported the information to law enforcement authorities. The survey did not go in to the reported number who filed charges or if convictions were obtained.

Background checks are absolutely necessary – particularly with these statistics. Doing a criminal records check in county courthouses or state records repositories might turn these convictions up – but federal searches will as well as most of these crimes will be filed in a federal court. Contacting past employers may also turn up the information that is noted in a job applicant’s file. These statistics were released in 2008. It will be interesting to see if the numbers increase in the following year(s).