Let's all face fact’s, IT security is not on the top of every IT decision maker’s list. It doesn’t improve turnover, streamline business process or improve employee productivity and there are no aesthetics the be gleamed for the modern office environment, but a report published recently found the following:
UK IT decision makers who had recently experienced a cyber-attack found that 86 per cent think that senior leadership is ‘only likely to invest in cyber security after suffering a damaging attack’.
75% of respondents in ‘Cybersecurity: Prevention Is Better than the Cure’ report stated that ‘some cyber-security incidents needed to happen’ to get increased tech investment from their leaderships.
“Net new funding is weighted more towards the remediation of breaches once they’ve happened,” said Oliver Cronk, chief IT architect. “The situation is the equivalent of a business leaving the front door and windows of its offices open and only locking them after a burglary has taken place.”
These are worrying statistics for any business but when you think that most Cyber-attacks result in approx. £10,000 of IT clean up per incident, standard fines for an attack are around the £100,000 region and 60% of business that suffer a major attack suffer from insolvency as a result. This brings us back to the point can any organisation still afford to treat IT security as an afterthought?
Loss of productivity resulting from downtime is cited by 56% of respondents as the most damaging impact of a cyber-attack, rather than other repercussions such as loss of intellectual property or reputational damage.
“Attitudes towards cyber security vary between different vertical sectors, just as they do within organisational hierarchies,” Cronk said. “Our survey data shows that the banking and university sectors, for example, are mostly concerned about the financial impact of a breach, whereas private healthcare, technology and telecoms firms are more worried about the loss of productivity during downtime.”
Other listed concerns include reputational damage (48%) and loss of intellectual property/data (46%).
“Respondents’ concerns over the impact of reputational damage following a major data breach seem to have become less prominent,” added Cronk. “This is possibly because the public and the media seem less interested in the kind of big-name breach incidents that were in the headlines in 2018 and 2019.”
Is it time for businesses to change their approach to IT security? One big tech company has recently changed their stance on IT security breaches, and they now say to their clients “it's no longer a matter of if you have a cybersecurity breach......... but when”
One thing is for sure that recent event such as the C19 pandemic and Ukraine/Russia war that cyber-attacks have stepped up in frequency and into a new threat level the likes of which we have never seen before.
Again, we cannot rely on outdated techniques or views on IT security, and we must face the future with new ways to solve this ever-growing threat.
If you require help with IT security or are concerned and need some directions, then please do not hesitate to give Ardent Group a call on 01227 774850 and we will be happy to assist.