An eye-opening survey conducted by Arbor Networks (News - Alert) and the Economist Intelligence Unit found that only one-sixth of businesses it polled were fully prepared for online attacks. Over three-fourths of companies had a security incident in the last two years and in spite of that, almost 40 percent of companies had not developed a plan to respond to future attacks.

Burlington, Mass.-based Arbor Networks, Inc. offers solutions that guard against distributed denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The approach that Arbor takes is different from the typical antivirus (AV) software app. AV apps are designed to identify and defend against specific attacks. As a result, new virus definitions have to be updated on a regular basis to keep up with the latest threats. Arbor found that no matter how much viruses and other attacks have evolved over the years, identifying and responding to these attacks came down to understanding network traffic.

Research from FireEye found that industrial espionage tended to be the most common motive for attack last year. This should be a huge concern to the enterprise customers that Arbor serves. The loss of critical intellectual property, trade secrets and other sensitive information to hackers could put many of them out of business. The 40 percent of companies without any sort of response plan to future attacks are rolling the dice when it comes to their future.

FireEye (News - Alert) also found that many attacks were a result of international disputes. It’s highly probable that North Korea engineered malware and DDoS attacks against South Korea. Pakistan and India have launched cyberattacks against one another, while other significant attacks were found in the Middle East and China. What drew the most attention in the media in 2013 was Edward Snowden revealing the U.S. National Security Agency (News - Alert) engaged in a global spying campaign that compromised 50,000 computers.

The combination of the growing number of cyber threats with the finding that many companies have no plan to deal with future online attacks is beyond cause for concern; it’s cause for alarm and action. It’s one thing if a company’s cyber security is analogous to a screen door with a locking hook. Too many companies don’t even have that much. The only thing protecting them from disaster is dumb luck.