The Dangerous World of Counterfeit and Pirated Software - Microsoft

F I G U R E 1 1
T h e C o s t t o E n t e r p r i s e s f r o m I n f e c t e d S o f t w a r e p e r I n c i d e n t
$ Spent in Identification, Repair, Recovering Data, and Dealing with
Data Theft per Infection from Counterfeit Software Package
$3,000
$2,500 $2,315
$2,499
$2,000
$672
$1,061
$1,500
$1,000
$1,400
$1,062
$1,573
$586
$997
$308
$1,055
$598
$360
$500
$716
$236
$658 $551
$199 $254
$315
$0
$98 $48 $96 $87
NA WE LATAM AP CEE World
Labor External costs Share of IT security resources
Source: IDC's Dangers of Counterfeit Software Economic Impact Model, 2013
Add up all these direct costs, and you get expected worldwide losses for enterprises
from security issues from counterfeit software of $114 billion. That's equivalent to 8%
of IT labor costs.
Figure 12 shows that per-unit cost extrapolated across all the infected counterfeit
software in enterprises around the world. Note the following:
The costs are highest in Asia/Pacific despite the fact that labor costs in the region
are so much lower than those in the developed world. This is because of the
sheer amount of counterfeit units there. Asia/Pacific encompasses 40% of the
world's installed base of enterprise PCs and more than 60% of counterfeit
software units — not counting those brought to work by end users.
In fact, the units brought to work — if each user who installs software on his or
her work computer installs only one program per year — increase enterprise
costs by a third.
20 #239751 ©2013 IDC