Cybercrime can be felt on a personal level as well as on a national level. Discounting the need to protect wireless information can become costly. According to The 2012 Cost of Cyber Crime Study: United States key points include:

• Cybercrimes continue to be costly. We found that the average annualized cost of cyber crime for 56 organizations in our study is $8.9 million per year, with a range of $1.4 million to $46 million. In 2011, the average annualized cost was $8.4 million. This represents an increase in cost of 6 percent or $500,000 from the results of our cyber cost study published last year.
• Cyber-attacks have become common occurrences. The companies in our study experienced 102 successful attacks per week and 1.8 successful attacks per company per week. This represents an increase of 42 percent from last year’s successful attack experience. Last year’s study reported 72 successful attacks on average per week.
• The most costly cybercrimes are those caused by denial of service, malicious insiders and web-based attacks. Mitigation of such attacks requires enabling technologies such as SIEM, intrusion prevention systems,  application security testing and enterprise governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) solutions.

It seems as though we are always a step behind “hackers”, so we need to take a proactive approach in protecting our wireless information. Becoming aware of the vulnerability and become more knowledgeable of the issues is the first step.

Definitions:

Cyber-attack-
an attempt to damage, disrupt, or gain unauthorized access to a computer, computer system, or electronic communications network.

Cybercrime-
the illegal use of computers and the internet crime committed by means of computers or the internet