New research from Fortinet, the provider of cyber security solutions, has revealed cyber security strategies of IT decision makers (ITDMs) at 250+ employee organisations across EMEA :
- 48% claim the best response to increased security breaches is to invest in new cyber security technologies that provide protection across the entire threat lifecycle.
- The two greatest concerns of ITDMs were securing the cloud and protecting against vulnerabilities in IT systems:
- Securing the cloud: 53% for the region and 61% of Spanish respondents – the highest in EMEA
- Protecting against vulnerabilities in IT systems: 53% for the region and 59% of Italian respondents
- However, many see increased security breaches as a catalyst for outsourcing cyber security functions to a managed security service provider (MSSP). In all, the research found that within three-five years, 44% of EMEA organisations could be addressing their cyber security priorities through outsourcing. The forecast for cyber security outsourcing adoption is highest in Germany (where a 14% of all organisations will make the switch) and slowest in Spain (4%).
“Our independent study highlights the urgent need among enterprise-scale organisations from all sectors in EMEA to prioritise end-to-end cyber security protection with actionable, threat intelligence capabilities in the face of new digital business challenges,” said Patrice Perche, senior vice president Worldwide Sales & Support, Fortinet. “Enterprises need to respond more rapidly and effectively to security breaches by investing in integrated, adaptive cybersecurity architectures for the borderless network.”
The survey examined the response tactics of those affected by cyber attacks to illustrate how present security infrastructures have struggled to contend with the realities of an increasingly digital world. Of the half (52%) of all EMEA IT decision makers in the survey who reported a security breach in the last year, only 16% of them realised this within minutes of the breach occurring.
In some sectors, such as healthcare, it took 50% of respondents days, months or even years to spot breaches.
Such a deficiency in rapid, effective threat identification and response is proven to be highly costly to breached organisations as sensitive data is lost, systems are compromised and brand reputation is damaged.
The survey found that, to mitigate these attacks and better protect their organisations, the number one action undertaken by ITDMs is the use of threat detection technologies (17%), closely followed by cloud-based cyber security services (12%). Such capabilities are underpinned by the provision of actionable threat intelligence.
EMEA respondents cited ‘improved prevention of attacks’ as the greatest value of threat intelligence (43%), followed by ‘improved information security strategy’ (38%) and ‘improved detection of breaches’ (35%).
In terms of how and where new threat intelligence capabilities may be applied, 35% of those asked said they had their own threat research/incident response team monitoring all security activity in place today, though the number is only 26% in Italy compared to 42% in Germany. Meanwhile, 26% of respondents claimed to outsource their cyber threat intelligence to a managed security service provider; of those respondents 22% in Spain and 31% in the UK outsource their threat intelligence.
“IT decision makers understandably want more resources to combat threats from all directions, but the answer doesn’t have to come in the form of spending more or ripping and replacing existing solutions,” said Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet. “Fortinet’s open, adaptive security fabric shows how enterprises can achieve true end-to-end protection with security capabilities that share intelligence across the entire attack surface. We are unique in providing the same breadth of capability and performance whether enterprises choose to retain in-house control of their own cybersecurity infrastructure, or use the services of an MSSP partner from our growing global community.”
Note on survey methodology
The 2016 Fortinet Global Security Survey was a research exercise undertaken on behalf of Fortinet by independent market research company Lightspeed GMI. The survey involved 1,399 qualified IT decision makers in 13 countries – predominantly CIOs, CTOs, IT Directors and Heads of IT – from organisations larger than 250 employees.
