Almost half of IT security leaders believe they won't be breached

A new study shows 47 percent of security leaders do not believe they will be breached despite the increasing sophistication and frequency of attacks.

The survey of 1,000 IT and security professionals across eight countries, conducted by The Enterprise Strategy Group for Illumio finds in the past two years alone 76 percent have been attacked by ransomware and 66 percent have experienced at least one software supply chain attack.

More than half (52 percent) believe cyberattacks will result in catastrophic breaches. The high level of confidence likely comes from the fact that 90 percent say advancing zero trust strategies is one of their top three security priorities this year as a way to improve cyber resiliency and reduce the rising threat of attacks turning into disasters.

The findings also show that segmentation is seen as critical to zero trust strategy. This stops breaches from spreading across hybrid IT, from the cloud to the data center. 75 percent of segmentation pioneers -- those who are classified as advanced users -- believe purpose-built segmentation tools are critical to zero trust and 81 percent say segmentation is an important technology.

Organizations that have adopted zero trust segmentation save an average of $20.1 million in application downtime, avert five cyber disasters per year, and plan to accelerate 14 more digital and cloud transformation projects over the next year.

"Catastrophic breaches keep happening despite another year of record cybersecurity spending. Money will not make the problem go away until security leaders move beyond the legacy approach to only focus on detection and perimeter protection," says PJ Kirner, Illumio's co-founder and CTO. "I'm shocked that nearly half of those surveyed in the Zero Trust Impact Report do not think a breach is inevitable, which is the guiding principle for zero trust, but I am encouraged by the hard business returns zero trust and segmentation deliver. Zero trust segmentation is emerging as a true market category that is transforming business operations and strengthening cyber resiliency."

Something else the report highlights is that hyperconnectivity created by digital transformation has expanded the attack surface and exposed organizations to risks never faced before. Respondents say software supply chain attacks (48 percent), zero-day exploits (46 percent) and ransomware attacks (44 percent) are the three threats that keep them up at night. 36 percent have been the victims of a successful ransomware attack over the past two years.

You can find out more and get the full report on the Illumio blog.

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