"They have much more money than IT engineers and security software engineers," Kaspersky said.

Some organizations hacked this year include Sony, Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, Google, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Citibank and the European Commission.

Companies can fight back with better processes and technologies to identify and mitigate threats, said panelist Steve Adegbite, director of cyber-innovations at Lockheed Martin Information Technology.

Hackers go through a series of key events to execute an attack, and companies need well-trained engineers and processes to identify and disrupt potential threats, Adegbite said.

Beyond protecting endpoints, data on the cloud also needs to be protected. Banks of data are moving online, and if there's economic gain, hackers will target the cloud, Adegbite said.