Computer-related crimes, including viruses and spyware, cost US businesses a staggering $67.2 billion a year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI calculated the cost by extrapolating results from a survey of more than 2,000 public and private organizations in four US states.
The survey, released on Friday, found that nine out of 10 organisations experienced computer security incidents over a 12-month period, with 20 per cent of them indicating they had experienced 20 or more attacks.
According to the 2005 FBI Computer Crime Survey, the average cost per company was more than $24,000, with the total cost reaching $32 million for those surveyed. Viruses and worms cost the most, accounting for 37.5 per cent of the total losses.
More than one in five organisations said they experienced port scans and network or data sabotage. The attacks came from 36 different countries, with the US (26 per cent) and China (23.9 per cent) being the source of over half of the intrusion attempts.
Noting that survey results can be skewed, the FBI when extrapolating the survey results reduced the estimated number of affected organisations from 64 per cent to a more conservative 20 per cent, CNET News reported.
"This would be 2.8 million US organizations experiencing at least one computer security incident," according to the 2005 FBI Computer Crime Survey.
"With each of these 2.8 million organisations incurring a $24,000 average loss, this would total $67.2 billion per year."
Other surveys have attempted to put a dollar amount on cybersecurity damages in the past, but the FBI believes its estimate is the most accurate because of the large number of respondents, said Bruce Verduyn, the special agent in Cyper Squad which administered the survey.
"The data set is three or four times larger than in past surveys," he said. "It is obviously a staggering number, but that is the reality of what we see."
