Cyber

Cyber survey

by Mark Rowe

Most, some 79 per cent, of organisations felt ‘technology let us down’ in some way when responding to the coronavirus pandemic and the need to work remotely, according to a Global Security Attitude Survey by a cyber firm.

CrowdStrike’s third annual survey was by Vanson Bourne among 2,200 senior IT decision-makers and IT security people across global industry sectors. It suggests that cyber talent – already in short supply before the pandemic – is set to become even more in demand in 2021. Going by the 200 UK respondents:

– most, 74pc believe economic recession leads to increased cybercriminal activity against their organisation;
– 63pc believe that their organisation is now at a higher risk from cyberattacks due to the pandemic; only the US percentage of 66 was higher;
– about half, 51pc believe that the pandemic and its subsequent impacts have made it harder to prevent cyber intrusions;
– and 44pc of UK organisations’ hiring and recruitment were frozen due to the pandemic and the UK had the lowest average of new cybersecurity hires of all countries surveyed. Just under a third of UK organisations (31pc) employed one to five new cybersecurity employees last year

Zeki Turedi, Chief Technology Officer EMEA at CrowdStrike said: “There’s no doubt attacks are increasing, both in terms of volume and sophistication, and for many firms, the change to working practices has made it harder to protect themselves. A zero trust mindset is crucial. One positive about the move to remote work is that it opens up access to global talent, and our findings underline the need for that. Our research is an early warning signal that the war for cyber security talent in the UK is set to go to the next level in 2021.”

The survey found that across countries the lockdown prompted more spend on security and cloud tools.

The study also showed that the enforced move to mass remote working means it can take longer for firms to identify when they have been breached (with 95 hours the average in Europe). With the value of GDPR (Europe-wide data protection law) fines are increasing, companies have found themselves on the back foot and at greater risk of missing mandatory deadlines for taking action and notifying customers if they cannot then understand and communicate the scale of the breach once detected, according to the firm.

Other UK respondents’ findings:

– 40pc believe that their average intrusion detection times have gotten slower since the pandemic
– Over a third believe that their legacy infrastructure is a contributing factor to faster cyber intrusion detection
– 57pc believe that a better understanding of cyberattacks and the adversaries that perpetrate them would speed up the detection of cyber incidents. A further 45pc believe this information will leave them better prepared to mitigate a data breach
– 30pc recognised that a delay in detecting an intrusion led to attackers ‘achieving their objectives’.

See also the CrowdStrike blog.

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