Cyber warfare costs to hit $20 billion this year.

By Jo Pettitt

VNU Newswire, © VNU Business Publications 1999

The cost of correcting cyber warfare incidents will exceed $20 billion worldwide this year, a UK research company has claimed.

Battersea based mi2g, which will advise company chiefs on the topic at a seminar in London tonight, said concerns within leading UK businesses over cyber attacks have been heightened since the beginning of the year.

The company said that in the last seven months, their have been major virus attacks and several full scale cyber attacks.

The Melissa virus in March, Chernobyl virus in April and the Explorezip worm virus in June cost corporations hugely in unplanned and unbudgeted resources it said.

mi2g added the cost of disabled computers and there down time is already exceeding $2.5 billion for each major cyber warfare incident.

Company founder and managing director DK Matai commented: "The key question is how does one plan for business continuity in the coming years as organisations become totally dependent on IT networks and this type of economic terrorism continues to grow geometrically?"

He added: "Expenses and time lost are rising much faster than budgets."