Survey: Financial firms prey for hackers

A global survey has revealed that 39 percent of financial institutions experienced at least one security breach within the past year.

		Special Report Cracking the nest egg Consumers are starting to bank online --and hackers are standing by.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's Global Security Survey, which was released Wednesday, showed that two-thirds of the security breaches were breaches from outside the organization.

Of the institutions, 47 percent have maintained or increased IT security staffing in the past two years, and 78 percent plan to adopt public key infrastructure (PKI) technologies, with almost as many planning to incorporate "smart" identification cards into their security system. Almost half of the companies surveyed have already instituted security policies related to wireless communications.

Despite this, only 5 percent of respondents to the survey were "extremely confident" about how well their organization's systems are protected from internal attacks.

Overall, 63 percent of respondents reported that management perceived spending on IT security to be a necessary cost of doing business, rather than a discretionary expense. Typically, security accounts for between 6 percent to 8 percent of an organization's IT budget.

ZDNet Australia's James Pearce reported from Sydney.