The study – sponsored by IBM and carried out by the Ponemon Institute – suggests that a radical rethink in the way businesses prioritise and plan their IT security strategies.
The survey took in 115 responses from CEOs at UK businesses and, says IBM, looked to get an idea of how companies are changing their IT security strategies in the face of a barrage of cyber attacks and high-profile data breaches.
The most interesting aspect of the research, Infosecurity notes, is that the average cost of each data breach was estimated at £112 per compromised record, and the average cost savings or revenue improvements resulting from data protection programmes totalled £11 million.
Equally interesting is that all the respondents to the survey said that their companies had their IT systems attacked at least once in the past year, with 77% saying they had endured a data breach at some point.
As a result, 76% of the CEOs said that they now view reducing potential security flaws in their business-critical applications as the single most important aspect of their IT security plan.
Commenting on the results, Larry Ponemon said: "In the face of growing security threats, business leaders are finally recognising that a strong data protection strategy plays a critical role to their bottom line."
"Once viewed as purely a technical issue, the responses garnered in our survey highlight a shift in how organisations are treating their investments in security software", he said.