Cybersecurity Survey 2019 Results
The cybersecurity industry has come a long way since the days of worms, malware, and ransomware (although these still exist and have evolved).
For many businesses, it’s now recognised that it’s no longer IF they experience a breach but more about WHEN. We’ve seen that reflected in security professional’s attitudes to how they approach cyber attacks. In a recent survey InfoTrust ran at the end of 2019* we found that 58% of respondents were confident in their business’ ability to detect successful attacks. However, there were still 33% who were uncertain or pessimistic about their business’ cyber defence capabilities.
The industry has seen the introduction of many privacy legislations in the past decade, intended to protect consumers’ personal data. Specifically, in Australia we had the introduction of the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in 2018, whereby any business that suffers a data breach is now obliged to notify any persons potentially affected. The majority of Australian organisations have an understanding of this legislation and how it affects them. However, when surveying a set of security professionals InfoTrust found 36% of businesses did not have a plan in place as to how they would respond to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) if a breach did occur. So there is a little further to go.
Security Services Spend Soars
Businesses have shifted focus beyond cybersecurity technology investments to security services and consulting. Last year IDC identified Managed Security Services as the largest security spend category for businesses in 2019, with global investment reaching more than $21 billion. This was also reflected in our survey results, with 80% of respondents identifying their businesses had engaged in security services such as risk assessments and external penetration testing in the past year.
InfoTrust has seen a growing requirement for consulting services from customers who are inundated with changing security standards and have difficulty in maintaining their compliance against other competing projects (see my CSO article here). Whilst there are a plethora of standards for businesses to choose from, half of the respondents identified NIST, ASD Essential 8 and ISO 27001 as their organisation’s guide for their security stance.
Addressing key security challenges
Looking forward to 2020, respondents identified the key security challenges that they’d like to overcome. Top of the list (unsurprisingly) was staff education and awareness, closely followed by policies, procedures, and infrastructure. Management education and awareness, along with technology also featured highly in the list.
Although the results have shown that most respondents have taken a layered security approach, deploying technologies such as; Next-Gen AV, Endpoint Detection and Response, Secure Email Gateways, Firewalls, and Multi-Factor Authentication capabilities. It also highlighted that 60% of respondents believe that these technologies have been less than 75% fully deployed and are not capable of delivering all features and functions. Resulting in a loss of ROI on these investments and opening organisations up to potential cyber threats.
InfoTrust was founded to help address this very problem. Our mission is to create trusted partnerships with our customers and enable them to realise maximum ROI from their cybersecurity investments. To find out more about how we do this check out our previous blog post on “Customer Love” here.
*InfoTrust Survey December 2019 – 36 security professional respondents
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Related resources
Mimecast recently released its State of Email Security Report for 2021. The fifth edition of its annual report used interviews with over twelve hundred of information technology and cybersecurity professionals across the globe to gather vital cybersecurity insights. The report offers an insight into the latest email threats along with advice on how to build cyber resilience and mitigate the risks of email-borne attacks.
Cyber attacks and data breaches have been commonplace in the news headlines for some time now. Although a warning from the media is certainly helpful, there is so much more that can be done when it comes to threat intelligence sharing. Threat intelligence sharing is an important part of the global cybersecurity community effort to tackle cybercrime and should form a part of every organisation’s cybersecurity strategy. Sharing cyber threat intelligence enables organisations to make informed decisions about their cybersecurity, building more effective and robust cyber defences.
One of my favourite annual reports to read is the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. It’s packed full of insights about the threat landscape and security leaders, in my opinion, should read this report to get a pulse on what’s happening in cyber-scape.
After all, as cyber leaders, we are here to stop breaches – so the insights gained from real cyber incidents and breaches is gold in learning how to tighten up our defences.
All businesses, large and small, are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that they are managing the risk of cyberattacks. This means having the right processes and controls in place to identify risks and vulnerabilities, protect information, as well as detect, respond, and recover in the event of cybersecurity incidents. As such, many businesses are turning to certification authorities and security frameworks to demonstrate privacy and security best practice and achieve compliance with regulatory bodies. System and Organisation Controls (SOC 2) is one such compliance framework that can help organisations to create a structured approach to cybersecurity.
Frost & Sullivan has recently released its 2021 Frost Radar: Email Security report, where its findings provide a benchmarking framework to help businesses protect their email from cyber threats.
As we operate in an increasingly digital world, every business collect, store, and share more and more data. And, amongst that data is personal information. With the OAIC marking this year’s Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) from Monday 3 May to Sunday 9 May 2021, it’s time for us all to review how we protect our customers’ personal information.
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