The study, conducted by the National ICT Security and Emergency Response Center (NISER), a goverment-backed cyber security organization, indicated that the level of awareness of the need for a thorough process to deter hackers and crackers was very low compared to the US.
"Such awareness in the US is in the 90 percent range or higher in companies polled...In Malaysia, I would say we are barely in the 60 percent mark," NICER's Panel of Experts (PoE) chairman Dr Mohamed Awang Lah said.
The survey, which is NICER's first since its formation last April, covered 205 public and private sector entities in the finance, retail, manufacturing, services and telecommunications sectors.
Other key findings indicated that 47 percent of respondents suffered some form of virus attack in 2000. About 113 of the organizations polled quantified losses attributed to these breaches at around RM239,000 (US$62,886) each.
Dr Mohamed told a media briefing on Wednesday that local organizations generally tend to rely on software and hardware as a primary means of stopping cyber threats.
"They must realise that cyber security is a process, and one must have a thorough understanding of this, outside the realm of hardware and software," he stressed.
He also revealed that last year, there was a jump in the number of incidents where fake Web sites of established organizations were used to spread malicious codes.
Meanwhile, NICER's PoE, which consists of 28 cyber security experts, had its first meeting yesterday.
The PoE, which is first ever formed in the country, is expected to act as an independent and interactive "think-tank" to help Malaysia understand and navigate the latest in ICT security.
Three issues were discussed--the inability of government agencies to work together to stop a major cyber attack, the low priority accorded to ICT security by top management of companies, and the lack of enforcement on certain ICT security-related issues in the country by the authorities.
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