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Cyber Crime Costing U.S. Millions

CUPERTINO, Calif. (KCBS) _ Cyber crime is costing U.S. companies millions of dollars a year according to a first-of-its-kind study released this past week.

"Cyber crime is very common and very likely to touch every company in the United States at some point in time," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute.

The Ponemon Institute is a research firm based in Michigan. They surveyed security experts at dozens of U.S. companies for the report.

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"In our study of 45 organizations, every organization experienced one or more cyber attacks that we'll classify as dangerous," Ponemon said.

And he said that was just over one four week period. In all, Ponemon said cyber crime costs organizations a lot of money.

"On an annualized basis, the median is $3.8 million," he said.

That doesn't include the element of lost time, as companies deal with detection, investigation, containment, recovery and solution issues.

Ponemon said the average amount of time it takes to look through all the faces after an attack is 14 days, at an average cost of nearly $18,000 a day.

The Cost of Cyber Crime Study was sponsored by cyber risk management firm ArcSight.

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