Security News > 2020 > November > Proofpoint survey: IT security leaders worry about and are ill-prepared to defeat cyber-attacks

IT security leaders say they are ill-prepared for a cyber attack and believe that human error and a lack of security awareness are major risk factors for their organisations, according to a series of reports and surveys from cybersecurity vendor Proofpoint.

It's a dynamic attack landscape: in the DACH countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland 67 per cent of IT security leaders say they have suffered at least one attack in the last 12 months, while in Benelux 72 per cent of respondents say their business has suffered at least one cyber attack in the same time period.

In the DACH countries IT security leaders indicate that successful attacks result in the loss of sensitive information, followed by business disruption, then reputational damage, while in Benelux and the UAE CISOs most frequently mention the financial loss as primary result of a cyberattack.

In the DACH countries almost half of those surveyed do not believe their company is vulnerable to cyber attack by employees - only 22 per cent of respondents train their employees more than twice a year on cyber security best practice and only six per cent run a continuous awareness programme.

Given the dynamic threat landscape, do businesses intend to take a more active approach to the review of their cyber strategies? Most security leaders expect their cyber defence budgets to increase to some extent in the next couple of years: in the DACH countries 55 per cent of respondents expect their budget to increase by up to 20 per cent in the next two years, while in Benelux and Sweden nearly three-quarters of respondents expect their budget to rise by more than 11 per cent.

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https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/11/05/proofpoint_survey_it_security_leaders/