Low budgets, lack of expertise and dated tech worsening cybersecurity vulnerabilities: Report

Information technology (IT) managers are inundated with cybersecurity threats but are unable to cope due to paucity of expertise, budgetary resources and dated technologies, a report said.

Abingdon, UK-based security software solutions provider Sophos, in its  survey titled, ‘The Impossible Puzzle of Cybersecurity’, found that Indian IT managers reported 32% of their team's time, on average, is spent on managing security. 

The survey polled over 3,100 IT decision-makers from mid-sized businesses in the US, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, India and South Africa. It was conducted by Vanson Bourne, an independent specialist in market research, between December 2018 and January 2019.

Of the IT managers polled in the subcontinent, only 8% said they have a strong team in place to detect, investigate and respond to security threats.

IT managers in India were in broad agreement when it came to budget and the technology at their disposal to curb cybersecurity vulnerabilities, the report said.  Almost 81%  Indian IT managers said that their organisation's budget allocated for cybersecurity (including people and technology) is inadequate.

Regarding technology, 89% said that staying up-to-date with cybersecurity technology is a challenge for their respective organisations.

“Staying on top of where threats are coming from takes dedicated expertise, but IT managers often have a hard time finding the right talent or don’t have a proper security system in place that allows them to respond quickly and efficiently to attacks,” said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist, Sophos. “If organizations can adopt a security system with products that work together to share intelligence and automatically react to threats, then IT security teams can avoid the trap of perpetually catching up after yesterday’s attack and better defend against what’s going to happen tomorrow. Having a security ‘system’ in place helps alleviate the security skills gap IT managers are facing.”

Recent reports dealing with cybersecurity:

• Over 21 percent of MSMEs across the world are prone to cybersecurity threats.
• Check Point Software Technologies said that Malware Agent Smith infected 15 million devices in India.
• A study by Frost & Sullivan and Forcepoint found that cyber attacks are hampering digital transformation of APAC firms.