Profits Embolden Hackers
By Tim Wilson, InternetWeek 

[snip...]

In two separate studies completed this month, Fortune 1000 companies 
reported more financial losses due to computer vandalism and espionage in 
1997 than they ever experienced before. Several corporations said they 
lost $10 million or more in a single break-in. And reports of system 
break-ins at the Computer Emergency Response Team site are the highest 
they've ever been.

[snip...]

In a study to be published next month, WarRoom Research found that the 
vast majority of Fortune 1000 companies have experienced a successful 
break-in by an outsider in the past year. More than half of those 
companies have experienced more than 30 system penetrations in the past 12 
months. Nearly 60 percent said they lost $200,000 or more as a result of 
each intrusion.

In a separate study published earlier this month by the Computer Security 
Institute and the FBI, 520 U.S. companies reported a total loss of $136 
million from computer crime and security breaches in 1997, an increase of 
36 percent from the year before. The Internet was cited by 54 percent of 
the respondents as a frequent point of attack, about the same percentage
of respondents that cited internal systems as a frequent point of attack.