In 2014, CyberEdge Group, an American premier research and marketing consulting company, released a one of a kind defense report. The report, based on the research of at least 750 professional security decisions, found that more than 60 percent of North-American and European organizations had been attacked by cyber criminals.
What happens at the beginning of 2015 may put a lot of worry in the heads of IT practitioners. The percentage from last year has risen to 71%, with the tendency of it growing in the second half if measures are not to be undertaken.
The conclusion the researchers reached in their first report is that one in four security arbiters fears their organization isn’t adequately fenced against system breaches. In 2015, the weakest link in most companies is expected to be mobile devices, followed by social media applications.
CyberEdge’s second report consists of security decisions of 814 IT practitioners in 19 industry sectors from North America and Europe and continues the beneficial process towards various businesses.
The 2015 report is based on thorough examination of the following:
- The efficiency of the present cyber security decisions adopted by organizations.
- The strength of specific domains.
- The probability rate of an attack within the next year.
- The types of security threats that bear greatest risks.
- Тhe potential burden of SDN (software-defined networking).
What Does CyberEdge 2015 Reveal About IT Security and Its Risks?
In terms of budget, 70% of the participants spend more than 5% on security decisions.
A third of the research’s collaborators does not use any tools to inspect SSL-encrypted traffic which is typical for cyber threats. That is why security analytics is the top-notch plan for 2015, followed by threat intelligence and next-generation firewalls.
Phishing, malware and zero-days (an attack that aims at a previously unknown vulnerability) are among the most popular threats. Not patching vulnerabilities is another reason for the growth of cyber attacks.
In terms of employees, low-security awareness seems to be a key problem, budget shortage being next on the list.
Unfortunately, only 23% of respondents were positive towards their security measures in 2015. One logical explanation for the low percentage is that cyber crooks are constantly redefining their ways.
It is curious to note that, based on the facts presented in the survey, European organizations are more likely to be attacked. 35 percent of North American companies pointed that their security was not compromised during the past year, compared to the shy 20 percent rate of European orgs.
Here is a link to the whole study report.