Cybersecurity Directly Affects Investor Attitudes, New HBGary Survey Finds
Survey Reveals Investors Demand More Transparency About Corporate Cyberattacks
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 70 percent of American investors are interested in reviewing public company cybersecurity practices and nearly 80 percent would not likely consider investing in a company with a history of cyberattacks, according to a new nationwide survey of investors released by HBGary today.
The survey of 405 U.S. investors (+/- 5% margin of error), conducted by leading research firm Zogby Analytics, also found that more than 66 percent of investors are likely to research whether a company has been fined or sanctioned for previous cybersecurity incidents.
"For some time, we have said that cybersecurity cannot be a 'checkbox' item on a company's operational to do list," said Ken Silva, senior vice president of cyber strategy for ManTech's Mission Cyber & Intelligence Solutions Group. "This survey proves that today's investors are more educated about the damage cyberattacks can cause to a company's brand and financial bottom line. The high cost of cyberattacks cannot be understated."
But, investors are not only looking at the actual attacks. Indeed, 66 percent of investors feel that corporate responses to cyberattacks are more noteworthy than the actual attack.
"This is good news," said Jim Butterworth, chief security officer for HBGary. "Fortunately, corporations now have access to cutting-edge tools to conduct monitoring, incident validation, response and other key phases of incident response on their own – without need for expensive services."
Stolen Data: What Matters Most to Investors
By a wide margin, the survey reveals investors are twice as concerned if a company had a breach of customer data (57 percent) versus theft of intellectual property (IP) (29 percent).
"Consumer data breaches grab the headlines and the large liability settlements. But the lack of concern for IP theft, underscores the need for broader education about the financial risk IP theft poses to a company," said Jim Butterworth, HBGary chief security officer. "The pilfering of American company trade secrets and other sensitive data is happening every day – costing our corporations billions of dollars in lost revenue."
According to a 2012 report by the FBI, "Economic Espionage: A Foreign Intelligence Threat To American Jobs and Homeland Security," the American economy is losing billions of dollars to economic espionage each year. When an organization's factory or device blueprints, confidential trade deals or other sensitive intellectual property are stolen and duplicated by a foreign entity, there are multiple costs to the victim company such as the loss revenue in the competitive marketplace and cost of creating new go-to-market ideas. In addition, a cyberbreach can financially impact an organization's customers, partners, etc. – all of whom must incur thousands of dollars in costs to mitigate the threat.
Survey Methodology
Zogby Analytics was commissioned by HBGary, a subsidiary of ManTech International Corporation, to conduct an online survey of 405 adults in the U.S. that identified themselves as part of the Investor Class.
Using trusted interactive partner resources, thousands of adults were invited to participate in this interactive survey. Each invitation is password coded and secure so that one respondent can only access the survey one time.
Using information based on census data, voter registration figures, CIA fact books and exit polls, Zogby Analytics uses complex weighting techniques to best represent the demographics of the population being surveyed. Weighted variables may include age, race, gender, region, party, education, and religion.
Based on a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error for 405 is +/- 5.0 percentage points. This means that all other things being equal, the identical survey repeated will have results within the margin of error 95 times out of 100.
For More Information
To learn more details about this survey and the tools and resources that organizations need to perform incident response best practices, please visit HBGary at RSA Conference 2013, Booth #2650, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from Monday February 25th – Thursday February 28th, 2013.
About HBGary
HBGary provides Enterprise Incident Response solutions and services to enable organizations to conduct key phases of incident response including detecting zero-days and other unknown malware, validating whether an actual incident has occurred, and responding to the incident. Customers include Fortune 50 corporations and U.S. government agencies. HBGary is located in Sacramento, Calif. and is a subsidiary of ManTech International Corporation. For information, please visit www.hbgary.com or HBGary's Twitter feed, Facebook or LinkedIn pages.
SOURCE HBGary
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