Size matters -- small cybersecurity teams face greater risk of attack

Companies with small security teams continue to face a number of unique challenges that place these organizations at greater risk than larger enterprises, according to a new study.

Research from Cynet, based on responses from 200 CISOs at small and medium businesses, finds 58 percent feel their risk of attack is higher compared to enterprises, despite the fact that enterprises are a bigger target.

Also 94 percent say they have barriers to maintaining their security posture due to a lack of skilled security personnel (40 percent), excessive manual analysis (37 percent), and the increasingly remote workforce (37 percent) among other factors.

Difficulty in managing and operating their threat protection products is due to overlapping capabilities (44 percent) and difficulty visualizing the full scope of an attack (42 percent). As a result, 90 percent of small security teams are outsourcing security mitigation to a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, while also using Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) services (21 percent) and Virtual Chief Information Officer (vCISO) services (15 percent).

There's been a big year-on-year rise in the use of Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools (from 52 percent to 85 percent of respondents), as well as a doubling of Extended Detection and Response (XDR) tool usage (from 15 percent to 30 percent). Among respondents, 77 percent indicate that EDR is now the number one tool for detecting threats, up significantly from 23 percent in 2021. Those reporting Network Detection and Response (NDR) as their primary method for detecting threats has fallen from 46 percent in 2021 to only three percent in the 2022 survey.

"CISOs with small security teams struggle to purchase and maintain the comprehensive set of security solutions needed to protect their companies from increasingly sophisticated threats," says Eyal Gruner, CEO and co-founder of Cynet. "The survey results once again show how these security experts continue to adapt their protection strategies in response to the ongoing wave of criminal and state sponsored cyberattacks."

The full report is available from the Cynet site.

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