OREANDA-NEWS. Businesses pay a significantly higher premium to recover from a cyberattack if virtual infrastructure is affected during the incident. Enterprises pay more than $800,000 on average to recover from a security breach, which is twice as much compared to incidents involving only physical infrastructure. This is one of the key findings of a 2015 Security of Virtual Infrastructure worldwide survey of 5,500 companies by Kaspersky Lab in cooperation with B2B International.

According to the survey, SMBs experience the same pattern as enterprises. On average, SMBs reported damage of more than $26,000 for an attack on their physical infrastructure. The involvement of virtual infrastructure in a security breach; however, drives the cost up to nearly $60,000.

Virtual Means Mission Critical

The main reason behind the additional cost for a security breach affecting virtual environments is that a majority of businesses use virtual infrastructure for their most important operations. In fact, 62% of companies use virtualization in some form. As a result, many organizations are likely to entrust virtual environments with the most critical business processes. While an attack on physical nodes leads to the temporary loss of access to business critical information in 36% of incidents reported, this rises to 66% when a breach affects virtual servers and desktops. Attacks affecting virtual environments also typically require additional budget on third-party expertise. Businesses have to request help not only from IT consultants, but also lawyers, risk management experts and others.

An incorrect perception of the threat landscape is an additional element that increases the cost of recovery in virtual infrastructures. The Kaspersky Lab survey found that 42% of businesses believe that security risks in virtual environments are significantly lower than in ‘physical’ environments. In addition, 45% of companies reported that security management in virtual infrastructures is perceived as a problem and yet only 27% of businesses have deployed a security solution specifically designed for virtual environments.

“Businesses expect that going virtual will drive down their IT spend and streamline their infrastructure. However, the survey results show us that if there is not enough attention paid to security matters in the virtual environment, expenses may exceed the benefit. Our view is that businesses should use customized, virtual-aware security solutions with centralized management and reporting. The solution should have a low impact on resources, a high detection rate and the ability to spot suspicious activity right away,” commented Matvey Voytov, Corporate Products Group Manager, Kaspersky Lab.

About Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is one of the world’s fastest-growing cybersecurity companies and the largest that is privately-owned. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users (IDC, 2014). Since 1997 Kaspersky Lab has been an innovator in cybersecurity and provides effective digital security solutions and threat intelligence for large enterprises, SMBs and consumers. Kaspersky Lab is an international company, operating in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, providing protection for over 400 million users worldwide.