Cybercrime and sabotage cost German companies $300 billion last year

Cybercrime and other acts of sabotage cost German companies about $298 billion last year, a 29% increase from the previous year, according to a new study from Bitkom. Reuters reports: Bitkom surveyed around 1,000 companies across all industries and found that 90% expect cyberattacks to increase in the next 12 months, while the remaining 10% expect the same number of attacks. About 70% of targeted companies attributed the attacks to organized crime, the study found, and 81% of companies reported theft of data, including customer information, access credentials and passwords, as well as intellectual property such as patents. About 45% of companies said they could attribute at least one attack to China, up from 42% the previous year. Attacks attributed to Russia came in second at 39%.

The rise in attacks has led to companies spending 17% of their IT budgets on digital security, up from 14% last year. Yet only 37% said they had a contingency plan to respond to security incidents in their supply chain, the survey found.