Despite most organizations (81 percent) suffering a data breach in the past twelve months, cybersecurity experts still downplay the likelihood of a breach.
This is according to a new report from IT giant VMware, based on a poll of more than 3,500 CIOs, CTOs and CISOs, which states that roughly half (56 percent) of respondents fear a material breach will take place in the next year.
However, just two in five (41 percent) have updated their security policy and approach to mitigating potential risks.
An increase in cyberattacks in not solely the fault of companies, however; criminals are also upping their game. The majority of respondents (76 percent) said attack volumes have increased lately, mostly due to the increase in the number of remote workers, who are considered the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain.
Of the attack types businesses have suffered lately, cloud-based assaults were the most frequent, while third-party apps and ransomware were said to be the leading breach causes.
While almost all (98 percent) either use or plan to create a cloud-first security strategy, it was found that cloud actually expanded the threat surface, resulting in many needing to change how they view security.
“The race to adopt cloud technology since the start of the pandemic has created a once-in-a-generation chance for business leaders to rethink their approach to cybersecurity,” said Rick McElroy, Principal Cybersecurity Strategist at VMware.
“Legacy security systems are no longer sufficient. Organizations need protection that extends beyond endpoints to workloads to better secure data and applications. As attacker sophistication and security threats become more prevalent, we must empower defenders to detect and stop attacks, as well as implement security stacks built for a cloud-first world.”
