61 per cent of financial organisations suffered data loss events in the second half of 2012. While 36 per cent broke PCI DSS compliance by sending unsecured credit card data to external parties, according to Check Point's 2013 Security Report.

The vendor conducted security audits at 888 companies worldwide (of which 128 were financial organisations), analysing millions of security events from the audits and from its own global network of threat sensors. Other key findings: 63 per cent of organisations globally are infected with bots, and 70 per cent of these communicate with their control centre at least every two hours. Fifty eight per cent of these control centres are in the USA, just four per cent in China; 53 per cent had malware downloaded onto their networks from existing infections

“Our research uncovered many alarming vulnerabilities and security threats on networks that most organisations were not aware of,” said Amnon Bar-Lev, president at Check Point. “With clearer visibility of these, IT professionals can now better define a security blueprint to protect their organisations from the constant stream of evolving security threats, ranging from botnets, to employees using risky web applications, to data losses.”

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