Worms, viruses, and online hoaxes are costing companies $2 million a year, according to a study released this week by the Aberdeen Group.
The research company also determined, from surveying 162 companies, that at least one incident of Internet business disruption per year over the past three years has averaged about 22 hours and cost even larger revenue losses for companies in widely-enough dispersed locations.
Aberdeen's report, "Internet Business Disruptions," said 84 percent of all companies surveyed said their business operations were throttled by Internet attacks in the last three years, and 15 percent of them stopped over seven times during that timeframe.
But with average recovery costs amounting to $74,000 an incident, Aberdeen said, the good news is that at least 82 percent of the companies surveyed have moved toward strategies based on avoidance and prevention.
This study came as the online business world continued recovering from a round of bugs that penetrated yet another Microsoft Internet Explorer flaw, provoking the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to suggest publicly that users consider avoiding IE entirely for the time being.
However, other reports, including Eweek, are saying information technology managers in turn say they're reluctant to change browsers, because their systems rely heavily enough on IE-specific intranet applications and Websites.
Eweek also said that while some of those IT managers have praise for alternatives like Mozilla, they also criticize Mozilla for its lack of support for ActiveX controls, and that their users would still need IE to visit some Websites including Microsoft's own Windows Update pages.
Microsoft itself is still being seen as presenting new improvements and renewed preference when its Windows XP Service Pack 2 is released later this year, even if – as Eweek and other analysts suggest – the new service pack won't offer that level of security to older Windows systems that still see widespread use in many corporate sites and systems.
Unfortunately, the hits just keep coming for IE. Yet another flaw has appeared – this time one that could let bugs slip past a computer's security through the browser, a flaw that isn't fixed by the patch Microsoft released late last week in the wake of the Scob incident. It is said to be the third time in a month Microsoft has played catchup to public disclosures about IE security breaches, CNET News said.
"They chose to address only one part of the problem," computer science student Jelmer Kuperus told CNET News, whom the tech news site said posted code for the workaround himself. "They should have seen this one coming."
