82 percent of security professionals worry about nation-state attacks

Nation-state attacks and hacktivists are among the biggest worries for IT security professionals according to a new study.

The report by AI security company Cylance and the Enterprise Strategy Group shows that 82 percent of respondents are concerned or extremely concerned by the threat posed by nation-states, and 79 percent are by the threat of hacktivists.

Cyber criminals are still seen as concerning by 99 percent and insider threats concern 78 percent. Interruptions to standard business operations are seen as the top impact of compromised endpoints (32 percent), followed by impeding the productivity of knowledge workers (31 percent), and delays to other IT projects (28 percent).

Ransomware attacks have been experienced by 46 percent of respondents' organizations in the past year, and of those, 60 percent experienced a recurrence of the same strain (but only 12 percent paid the ransom). Thirty-five percent of respondents claim known malware is the most common threat faced in the past two years.

A third of respondents (32 percent) say machine learning is detecting new and unknown malware that evades other endpoint security solutions and 25 percent are deploying the technology to increase productivity. Forty-seven percent have already deployed machine learning for endpoint security, with 23 percent currently testing the technology.

"The threat landscape is constantly changing, but this research shows that just because an attack form is old, doesn't mean it won't remain effective," says Doug Cahill, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "There is one reason phishing attacks are of extreme concern to 47 percent of businesses: they work. While new threats and zero-days will continue to keep security teams up at night, it will be a mixture of the old and new attack forms that keep them busy."

You can find more about the findings in the full report which is available from the Cylance website.

Photo Credit: Jirsak/Shutterstock