Blumberg Capital revealed findings from a recent U.S. survey that shows 60 percent of respondents believe they have never been a victim of cyber hacking or are unaware if they have. The company maintains that statistics reveal that they should be more concerned. It sources the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, which says more than a million people become a victim of cybercrime every day. Additionally, $15 billion was stolen from 13.1 million American consumers in 2015, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
Blumberg Capital commissioned the survey from Researchscape International, which questioned 1,012 U.S. adults about their technology devices and cybersecurity knowledge.
“Consumers vastly underestimate cybersecurity threats and don’t know how to identify, respond, or protect themselves from future attacks,” David Blumberg, founder and managing partner of Blumberg Capital, comments. “Naiveté and arrogance are a really dangerous combination. The cybersecurity landscape is complex and ever-evolving. Bad actors are constantly finding new ways to bypass security measures to infiltrate confidential systems and steal information or sabotage infrastructure. Even experts can miscalculate how to mitigate risks and existing security solutions are no longer enough, especially in areas such as IoT or cloud security.”
Forty-five percent of the people surveyed said they would not know if they had been hacked or would only know if contacted by a vendor or legal authority. Only 13 percent expressed complete confidence in their own ability to recognize if they have been hacked. Less than half of respondents (39 percent) said they were concerned about potential hacks of their laptops, and 38 percent indicated concern about potential hacks of their IoT devices such as smart appliances and smartphones.
This data is interesting to compare to recent findings released by Parks Associates that said 45 percent of U.S. broadband households are very concerned that someone will gain unauthorized access and control of a smart home device. More on the Parks research is available here.
Information on the Blumberg Capital survey is available here.