Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

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INTERNET SECURITY INCIDENTS OR BREACHES AND THEIR IMPACTS

Businesses with internet access were asked whether any internet security incidents or breaches (that were not intercepted by the business' internet security measures) occurred in 2009-10. They were then asked about the resultant impacts of those security incidents or breaches. Please note, the scope of this topic was changed from businesses with a computer (2007-08) to businesses with internet access (2009-10).

Overall, 12% of businesses with internet access had an internet security incident or breach during the year ended 30 June 2010. The proportion of businesses with an internet security incident or breach ranged from 10% for those businesses with 0-4 persons employed, to 19% for those businesses with 200 or more persons. The impact of these incidents or breaches most commonly experienced was downtime of service (62%), followed by corruption of hardware or software (53%) and loss of staff productivity (43%).

Internet security incidents or breaches(a), by industry, 2009-10

Impact of IT security incident or breach, by employment size(a)(b) - 2009 - 10
	0-4 persons	5-19 persons	20-199 persons	200 or more persons	Total
	%	%	%	%	%
Corruption of hardware or software	52.6	54.2	^51.5	^35.4	53.0
Corruption or loss of data	29.7	30.0	^29.7	^21.8	29.7
Downtime of service	^61.3	^62.9	^58.5	^73.8	61.8
Web site defacement	4.9	5.6	3.3	11.0	5.1
Theft of business, confidential or proprietary information	6.3	4.2	1.8	5.2	5.0
Loss of income	15.3	10.0	10.1	7.7	12.6
Loss of staff productivity	39.9	44.7	^52.1	^62.6	43.3
^ estimate has a relative standard error of 10% to less than 25% and should be used with caution
(a) Proportions are of all businesses that experienced an internet security incident or breach in each employment size category.
(b) Businesses could identify more than one option.

For businesses that experienced an internet security incident or breach, downtime of service was the most common impact in each of the employment size ranges. Loss of income was almost twice as common for businesses with 0-4 persons employed (15%) than for businesses with 200 or more persons employed (8%).

By industry, the loss of staff productivity from an internet security incident or breach was most prevalent in Professional, scientific and technical services (65%). An internet security incident or breach resulting in downtime of service was most likely to be experienced by businesses in Transport, postal and warehousing (91%), followed by Agriculture, forestry and fishing (85%).

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