System compromises are now the greatest cyber concern for IT security leaders, with nearly one in four (23 percent) security leaders citing them as the biggest threat to their business, according to new research from the Neustar International Security Council (NISC).
The exploitation of such vulnerabilities was selected ahead of ransomware (19 percent) and financial data theft (19 percent) as the greatest cyber risk to businesses across Europe, with DDoS (17 percent) and intellectual property (IP) threats (13 percent) also prevalent.
This new data has been revealed as part of a bi-monthly research series from the NISC, which has polled 252 IT security CTOs, VPs, senior directors, business managers and other professionals across Europe with a security remit.
The NISC research findings have also been used to calculate a Cyber Benchmarks Index, which measures the level of concern in the NISC community of security professionals about the current international cyber security landscape. The index figure is up to 9.4, a considerable increase from the 6.5 rating in May 2017.
Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of respondents acknowledged that specific recent cyber attacks have directly affected the way they protect their enterprise, an eight percent increase in just two months. Leaders have cited moves such as changing their “entire security infrastructure”, the renewal and expansion of their security teams and also employing external specialists to tackle this issue.
Nearly half (45 percent) of respondents highlighted targeted hackings as a growing threat to their business, followed closely by general phishing (43 percent) and ransomware (43 percent), with organizations repositioning their efforts to protect against such dangers.
Methodology
In October 2017, 252 interviews were completed across five countries in Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Survey respondents hold senior positions such as CTO, Director of IT and Security Consultant including business managers, senior directors, CTOs and other professionals with a security remit.
https://www.nisc.neustar/
