If employees were unaware of internet security protocols within their business, they could be damaging the business from the inside, according to Symantec security and compliance director, Sean Kopelke. According to the vendor's 2011 Cost of a Data Breach , 32 percent of data breaches from Australian companies spawned from individual negligence and the average data breach has amounts to $2.16 million per breach.

"Not only is $2 million a significant amount to take away from company profits, but the news of data being stolen will be damaging in the long run as reputations can be ruined and existing customers might be looking to move due to lack of security of personal data," Kopelke says.

A data breach resulting from internal negligence could prove to be very expensive and this was not often in the budget for many organisations, warns Pure Hacking's Miller.

These costs, which could reach millions of dollars, include paying for a digital forensic investigation to identify what systems and data have become compromised, implementing mitigation controls to prevent the attack from occurring again and resources to restore the integrity of the data with the systems.

In addition, the company would need to rebuilding systems from scratch to ensure backdoors and rootkits were not present on the systems, followed by a major investment in developing and implementing a strong security program.