Security pros lack the necessary tools to thwart cyber attacks
A new study from the Ponemon Institute reveals that external cyber attacks cost enterprises $3.5 million a year and that the majority of security and IT professionals lack the necessary resources and infrastructure to deal with these attacks, despite the growing risks and costs associated with them.
A number of threats were examined in the report including executive impersonations, social engineering exploits and branded attacks that occurred outside of a company’s traditional security boundaries. To address these external threats, security professionals cited an ever-growing need for expertise, technology and external services.
When it came to how their companies monitored the Internet and social media, a shocking 79 percent of the respondents described their security processes as non-existent. This is despite the fact that 59 percent said that the protection of intellectual property from external threats is essential or very important to their companies being sustainable. Eighteen percent of companies had security processes that were inconsistently applied throughout the enterprise.
Ponemon’s report also highlighted how many security leaders feel as though they lack the resources to do their jobs correctly. Sixty-four percent lack the resources to monitor, 62 percent lack the tools and resources needed to analyze and understand and 68 percent lack the tools and resourced needed to mitigate external threats.
BrandProtect’s CEO, Roberto Drassinower highlighted how difficult it currently is for security leaders to combat external threats, saying "As external threats explode in both frequency and sophistication, forward-leaning security teams are actively prioritizing external threat detection, intelligence and mitigation in their objectives. But as evidenced in today’s report by the Ponemon Institute, the majority of enterprises still have a long way to go. Despite losing millions of dollars annually to external and branded exploits, security teams are dealing with a significant readiness gap".
The study and subsequent report titled "Security Beyond the Traditional Perimeter" is sponsored by Internet risk detection and mitigation company BrandProtect. The Ponemon Institute surveyed 591 respondents from 505 different companies to amass data for its study.
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