A poll of more than 1,500 security professionals by ISACA, the global IT association, has found that more than one in five respondents said they organisation had suffered a spy attack to steal intellectual property, while almost two-thirds expect an attack on their firm at some point.

Coming at a time when the wealth management and related financial services sectors have themselves suffered security breaches, as in the case of stolen client data in Switzerland, the survey is a reminder of other security threats in the digital age.

The ISACA survey found that 94 per cent of respondents say that advanced persistent threats, or APTs, represent a credible threat to national security and economic stability, yet most enterprises are employing ineffective technologies to protect themselves.

Attacks such as the Google Aurora and the security breach of RSA, the technology firm, have demonstrated the threats to industries as well as governments, ISACA said.

More than 60 per cent of survey respondents say that it’s only a matter of time before their enterprise is targeted.

Meanwhile, 96 per cent of respondents say they are at least somewhat familiar with APTs; 53 per cent of respondents say they do not believe APTs differ from traditional threats.

“APTs are sophisticated, stealthy and unrelenting,” said Christos Dimitriadis, international vice president of ISACA. “Traditional cyber-threats often move right on if they cannot penetrate their initial target, but an APT will continually attempt to penetrate the desired target until it meets its objective—and once it does, it can disguise itself and morph when needed, making it difficult to identify or stop.”