Managing cyber risks is getting harder

A new study reveals that that 90 percent of leaders find managing cyber risks harder today than they did five years ago, resulting in higher reports of burnout (47 percent), including more than one in ten who say they’re on the verge of quitting.

The report from Bitsight shows the leading causes of poor cyber risk management, and therefore burnout, include an explosion of AI (39 percent), and rapidly expanding attack surfaces (38 percent).

There’s also a lack of full visibility into attack surfaces (17 percent), due to AI and the rapidly expanding attack surfaces. Poor visibility leads to poor communication of cyber risks too (32 percent).

Monitoring third-party connections is an issue too, while 99 percent of organizations assess third-party relationships, only a third continuously monitor all of them, leaving their supply chains vulnerable -- this also leads to more burnout as the burnout rate among those without a formal risk management program grows to 54 percent.

The report’s authors conclude:

The results of this report underscore that cybersecurity is at a critical juncture. As organizations face an increasingly complex cyber risk landscape that keeps getting tougher in the face of AI-driven threats and rapidly expanding attack surfaces, the disciplined use of security telemetry is going to be the difference-maker.

The key, though, will be in how to turn that data into true cyber risk intelligence that folds in business and threat intelligence into the mix.

You can get the full State of Cyber Risk and Exposure 2025 report, including tips on improving cyber maturity, from the BitSight site.

Image credit: Marek Uliasz/Dreamstime.com