SAN FRANCISCO: Computer security violations continue to rise as the Internet extends its web into the US economy, with as many as 90% of respondents in a survey released Wednesday reporting they detected security breaches within the past 12 months.

Other than common computer viruses or theft, 70% of respondents reported serious breaches including theft of proprietary information, financial fraud, system penetration from outsiders, denial of service attacks and sabotage of data or networks, the San Francisco -based Computer Security Institute said.

The issue of Internet security received global attention recently after hackers launched a series of denial of service attacks against popular Internet sites.

But the institute's survey shows that security is a long-standing problem of growing importance and cost to corporations, financial institutions, universities, hospitals and government agencies.

The survey of 643 computer security professionals found that 93% of their organisations maintained World Wide Web sites and 43% conducted e-commerce on their sites, up from 30% in last year's survey.

As many as 32% admitted they did not know if their sites had been victimised by unauthorised access or misuse. Of those admitting intrusions, 19% reported 10 or more incidents, 64% reported website vandalism and 60% reported denial of service.

The institute found 273 respondents willing to quantify their losses financially --the total topped US$265mil (RM1.07bil), mostly from theft of proprietary information.

"Cyber crimes and other information security breaches are widespread and diverse," said Patrice Rapalus, director of the Computer Security Institute, which has conducted the survey for the past five years.--dpa