TechWatch:

You can’t put a price on many things. The steadfast loyalty of a friend, a Van Gogh masterpiece, a pot noodle…

No, wait. It’s not that you can’t put a price on a pot noodle, it’s that you shouldn’t. Even giving them away free is too expensive.

Snack-food digressions aside, you can apparently put a price on the damage cyber-crime does to the ailing British economy. And that figure is a staggering £27 billion every year.

So consultant firm Detica claims, in research conducted in conjunction with the government’s Office of Cyber-security. £27 billion is lost due to Intellectual Property theft and industrial espionage, the report states.

Cyber-crime hits the government itself for around £2.2 billion, and the citizens of the UK for £3.1 billion, but businesses cop for most of the damage – £21 billion. IP theft represents some £9 billion of that, and espionage £7.6 billion.

The hardest hit industries are the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors, electronics, chemicals and IT.

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2011/02/17/cyber-crime-costs-uk-economy-27-billion-per-year/