Access Control
& Security Systems

Sixty-four percent of large corporations and government agencies have acknowledged financial losses stemming from computer security breaches, according to The Computer Security Institute/FBI "Computer Crime and Security Survey," released April 7.

The sixth annual report, complied with the help of the San Francisco FBI Computer Intrusion Squad, is designed to raise the level of security awareness and determine the actual scope of computer crime in the U.S. Some of the survey results:

-- 90 percent of respondents (primarily large corporations and government agencies) detected computer security breaches within the last 12 months.

-- 64 percent acknowledged financial losses due to computer breaches.

-- As in previous years, the most serious financial losses occurred through theft of proprietary information (41 respondents reported $170,827,000) and financial fraud (40 respondents reported $115,753,000).

-- For the fifth year in a row, more respondents (74 percent) cited their Internet connection as a frequent point of attack than cited their internal systems as a frequent point of attack (33 percent).

-- 34 percent reported the intrusions to law enforcement. (In 1996, only 16% acknowledged reporting intrusions to law enforcement.)

-- 40 percent detected system penetration from the outside.

-- 40 percent detected denial of service attacks.

-- 78 percent detected employee abuse of Internet access privileges (for example, downloading pornography or pirated software, or inappropriate use of e-mail systems).

-- 85 percent detected computer viruses.

This month in Access Control

• Opening Up About Door Closers
• An Enterprise Approach
• The Framework For Open Systems
• On A Higher Plane
• More from April's issue