Enterprises not confident security can keep up with digital transformation

Businesses are increasingly turning to digital transformation to accelerate their online presence, to enrich products, deepen customer relationships, and boost their brand.

But the bad guys have gone digital too, taking advantage of the digital ecosystem and user trust to make more sophisticated attacks. A new study sponsored by digital threat management company RiskIQ finds that for many businesses digital transformation and the changing external threat landscape are outpacing enterprise security capacity.

The research conducted by IDG Connect finds that an average of 40 percent of organizations experienced five or more significant security incidents in the past 12 months. Among most cited external threats are malware, ransomware, phishing, domain and brand abuse, online scams, rogue mobile apps, and social impersonation.

The worrying finding is that 68 percent of respondents express no to modest confidence in their ability to manage digital threats. Also 70 percent of respondents have no to modest confidence in being able to reduce their digital attack surface, expressing the least confidence in threats against web, brand, and ecosystem assessment.

Only 31 percent express high confidence in the likelihood that their organizations can mitigate or prevent digital threats, this is despite all respondents increasing their short-term digital security spend. Over half of survey respondents expect their short-term digital defense investment to increase between 15 to 25 percent or more.

"We are pleased to sponsor the 2017 State of Enterprise Digital Defense Report. The independent research provides a useful litmus test for the level of exposure, controls, and investment regarding external web, social and mobile threats among global industries," says Scott Gordon, chief marketing officer at RiskIQ. "The findings validate the need for enterprises to leverage cross-channel intelligence, automation, and resource optimization as they build out digital defenses to reduce operational and reputational risk."

Further details of the research will be shared in a webcast on September 26 at 11am ET.

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