Majority of organisations suffered IT security attack in the last year

A new report published by IT security vendor Forescout, entitled ‘The state of IT cyber defence maturity’, has examined the increasing need for organisations to prioritise cyber defence – and discovered that most companies suffered an attack within the last 12 months.

Around 96 per cent of organisations reported facing major IT security concerns since last summer. In spite of this, a mere 33 per cent believe that their employers would take action to improve their security. Those who took part in the survey included 1,600 decision makers in information security, covering five industries in both Europe and the US.

The incidents which caused the most problems were a result of unauthorised data access, unsanctioned application and device usage, compliance policy violations, and phishing.

The study revealed that threat velocity, exposure diversity, and network complexity are resulting in security operations being more complex than they have been in the past. Due to an increase in the complexity and volume of incidents, it may be surprising that just 40 per cent of those surveyed said security management tasks are more of a challenge now than two years ago.

The report established which areas in IT security are prime for improvement in organisations throughout the world.

If companies based in Europe and the US don’t begin to invest more resources into IT security recruitment, they are leaving themselves vulnerable to further incidents. The study has highlighted the issues – but how these organisations respond is in their hands.