Deloitte's fourth annual Global Security Survey provides benchmarks for IT security in the financial services industry.

This year the survey highlights a surge in the number of security attacks, with more than 75 percent of respondents confirming external breaches, and almost 50 percent reporting internal breaches. This year the survey reveals that the majority of attacks were originated to extort some form of monetary gain, indicating an increase in threat from more organized crime operations, rather than the ‘nuisance’ hackers seen in previous years.

Other findings of this year’s survey include:

• 95 percent of participants have increased their information security budgets since last year
• 72 percent of participants experiencing a breach estimate that it cost their organization greater than US$1 million
• 71 percent of participants indicate that they now have a defined information security governance structure in place