“Businesses across industries face unprecedented challenges posed by a growing attack surface, zero-day vulnerabilities, cloud misconfigurations and new emerging AI-driven threats,” said Andrei FlorescuPresident and CEO of Bitdefender Business Solutions Group.
“Our recent survey results highlight a now-vital approach to cybersecurity that layers threat prevention, protection, detection and response across all environments, including cloud infrastructure, services and supply chains . The goal of effective cybersecurity is not only to stop attacks at the door, but also to reduce risk and optimize resources (technology and people) to help relieve pressure on security teams” , added Florescu.
When asked how much GenAI technology threat When compared to the overall cybersecurity landscape, 96% of all respondents agreed that it is a threat, with over 36% reporting its use to manipulate or create misleading content (deep fakes) poses a significant threat. Interestingly, confidence (or perhaps overconfidence) in detecting some type of deepfake attack (audio/video) was high, with 74% believing their colleagues in their service could do it.
Data Breaches Continue to Rise Year Over Year
57% of organizations experienced a data breach or data breach in the last 12 months, up 6% from the previous year when asked the same question. At 73.5%, respondents in the UK experienced the highest number of data breaches or leaks, Germany at 61% and Singapore at 33% (24% below average).
64.3% of all respondents said they would Looking for a new job over the next 12 months, a considerable increase of 25% compared to last year’s result. This result correlates with the fact that 70.2% of respondents agree that they have to work weekends due to security issues their company faces. Respondents in the UK are most likely to work weekends (81%) and respondents in Germany are most likely to be looking for a new job (76.6%) (12.2% more than the average).
When asked what the top security concerns were when managing cloud environments, 38.7% said IAM was a close second in maintaining cloud compliance at 38%. Respondents in Singapore were well above average (50.5%), saying IAM was their biggest challenge.
At 36%, shadow computing came in third overall, followed by risk of misconfigurations at 34%. Additionally, when asked how risks are monitored in cloud infrastructure, only 44.6% of all respondents said they conduct regular audits and assessments.
Phishing attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated
The main cybersecurity threats according to all those surveyed are phishing/social engineering and software vulnerabilities and/or zero-days at 32%, followed closely by GenAI’s influence on cyberthreats and ransomware (both at 29%) and insider threats at 28%.
More than 74% of respondents say they have seen an increase in the sophistication of phishing attacks (probably correlating with the sudden rise of GenAI). Surprisingly, in the regions of France, USA and Germany, GenAI was considered the main threat. Ransomware at 35.5%, 34.3% and 32.8% respectively.
Respondents cited the top reasons they use or consider using a managed detection and response (MDR) service. More than a third of respondents cited 24/7 security coverage as the number one reason, followed by access to top security analysts and the ability to proactively hunt down threats. at 29%.
When it comes to managed services, 93% of respondents plan to invest more in proactive cybersecurity measures (e.g., penetration testing, red teaming), and 37% of them say it’s very likely. Respondents in Singapore were most likely to invest in proactive cybersecurity (97%).
When asked what the biggest challenge is with an organization’s current security solutions, meeting data and regulatory compliance was the number one challenge for 28% of all respondents. Expanding capabilities across multiple environments comes in second at 27.5%, followed by incompatibility with other security solutions at 25%. At 29%, U.S. respondents were most concerned about the level of security of third-party partners, 5% above average.
The report is based on an independent survey and analysis of more than 1,200 IT and security professionals, from managers to CISOs, who work at companies with 1,000 or more employees in geographic regions around the world entire.
