A cybersecurity survey from Boston-based EiQ revealed a significant drop in business respondents’ confidence in the security technologies they have deployed to protect their organizations from data breaches and asset theft.
The survey from EiQ Networks, which specializes in hybrid security as a service, focused on small to medium-sized enterprises cybersecurity technology investment, current ability to thwart attacks, and security priorities of. It found 86% have underfunded security initiatives, and 56% said their organizations are unprepared to identify and respond to cyberattacks
The study conducted in the first quarter of 2017 of more than 150 IT security professionals at SMEs included security engineers, IT security managers, security officers, and IT administrators, among others. In a new cybersecurity survey. Almost a fifth of survey respondents came from the financial services and insurance sectors.
Compared with EiQ’s 2015 cybersecurity survey, when 26.8% of IT security professionals expressed confidence in their security posture, in 2017 less than 15% reported confidence that currently deployed technologies can successfully in detect and responding to cyberattacks.
Other findings include:
- 75% of respondents said they employ 0-2 security professionals
- 74.6% are concerned about protecting customer data
- 67.3% are concerned about protecting personally identifiable identification
- 56.2% are concerned about protecting employee data
- 47.7% review cybersecurity at least quarterly with executive management and their board of directors
“Our latest survey on the state of the cybersecurity landscape is very revealing. One of the most striking result is how little SMEs are spending on cybersecurity as compared to the overall IT budget – despite the very high risks they face daily from ransomware, phishing, and zero-day attacks, to name just a few,” Vijay Basani, founder and CEO of EiQ Networks, said. “The results also show that companies are not just underfunding cybersecurity, they are also understaffed. Without the IT security resources and expertise necessary to continually monitor, detect, and respond to security incidents, SMEs are simply exposing themselves to loss of revenue, brand equity, IP, and customer data on a daily basis.”
Basani added, “What it tells us is investing in technology alone is not going to solve the problem.” He noted EiQ delivers comprehensive proactive and reactive security monitoring program to protect against modern-day cyberthreats while meeting regulatory mandates.
