Has UK business lost the plot on security spending?

New research from think-tank the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) suggests that the true cost of cyber-crime to business in the UK is as high as £34 billion per year. That total can be divided roughly in half, with £18 billion falling to lost revenue following successful attacks and £16 billion in the increased amount required to secure business against the ongoing threat. Shocking enough headline figures, but the real shocker can be found in the detail such as: 70 percent of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) think their internal security policies block innovation to some extent, and 60 percent that the government should be doing more to help them. Quite apart from the small matter of the maths: if security budgets are going up in synchronicity with the cost of successful attacks against business, then clearly business is spending too much in all the wrong places. SCMagazineUK.com has spent today asking the question 'could British business better balance the security books?'