Cybersecurity company Trend Micro has announced that 90% of organisations around the world have been victims of cyber attacks over the past 12 months.
The findings come from Trend Micro’s bi-annual Cyber Risk Index (CRI) report, which was compiled by the Ponemon Institute earlier this year from interviews with over 4,100 organisations across North America, Europe, South America and Asia-Pacific.
Dr Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said “the CRI continues to provide a fascinating snapshot of how global organisations perceive their security posture and the likelihood of being attacked.”
“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” he added, since attacks “cause damage to the critical infrastructure” of a business, leaving it particularly vulnerable “in the face of today’s stiff macroeconomic headwinds.”
The top threats highlighted by respondents were business email compromise, clickjacking, fireless attacks ransomware and login attacks.
A third of global organisations have been victims of seven or more of these attacks this year as it becomes difficult to profile and defend an ever-expanding attack surface.
Elevated risk, weakened security
While the CRI reported a surging number of cyber attacks over the past six months, it also noted a large gap between organisational preparedness and the likelihood of being attacked.
Eight out of ten organisations told interviewers a breach of critical data was likely within the next twelve months, with many pointing to a misalignment of IT security with business objectives as the root of their vulnerability.
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Many respondents also highlighted a lack of involvement from CEOs and Board Members in relation to cybersecurity procedures, preventing organisations from constructing organised strategies to build a defence against attacks.
This lack of engagement has left them unprepared to deal with data breaches and cyber-security exploits due to their lacking in adequate security technologies to detect breaches and protect data assets and IT infrastructure.
Costly implications for the enterprise
The CRI report’s findings arrive at a time when the cost of cyber attacks is at an all-time high, with a single data breach costing an organisation $4.35 million according to a study by IBM.
If business leaders address the shortage of cybersecurity professionals and improve their technologies to fight cyber attacks, it will greatly reduce their vulnerability to cyber-attacks.
“You can’t protect what you can’t see”, said Jon Clay, VP of Threat Intelligence at Trend Micro, stating that “to avoid attacks spiralling out of control, companies “need to combine asset discovery and monitoring with threat detection and response on a single platform.
The CRI concludes that organisations worldwide must rethink their cybersecurity strategies to be able to defend themselves against the global presented by cyber attacks.
