The Top Security Threats Faced by Enterprise Security Leaders
Here’s a frightening problem: The cyber threat landscape is growing and continues to evolve.
According to a prediction by Cybersecurity Ventures, cybersecurity will become a $1 trillion enterprise between 2017 and 2021.
What’s even more frightening is the fact that the cost of cybercrime is projected to tally to over $6 trillion during the same timeframe.
Even though many new cybersecurity technologies have been created, IT professionals still lack confidence. In 2016, 75 percent of them feared they would fall prey to cyber attacks. Additionally, nearly half believe they can no longer identify malicious activity traversing their networks and 86 percent report their cybersecurity the function does not meet organizational requirements.
Amid so much trepidation and uncertainty, how can enterprise security leaders know the top security threats to focus on and how they should be addressed.
The top five cyberthreat areas that are putting organizations at risk today as identified by Fortinet are:
1. Cloud Adoption
Managing security and compliance across disparate cloud services – whether public, private, or hybrid – is a challenge. Ironically, even though 64 percent of IT professionals believe the cloud is more secure than on-premise infrastructure security, they concurrently list security as their most prevalent challenge when it comes to the cloud.
2. Internet of Things
IoT devices have the potential to become more pervasive in the lives of people (consumer IoT) and businesses (industrial IoT) than smartphones. The security concerns are amplified because of the use cases for these IoT devices. And as IoT devices propagate, so will the security risks associated with them.
3. Ransomware
Ransomware attacks more than doubled last year, with upwards of 4,000 attacks occurring daily that infected an average of 30,000 to 50,000 devices each month. The impact of ransomware is not only in the ransom being paid but also the repercussions to business operations, which can be in the forms of financial losses, environmental impact, or even the loss of human life.
4. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption
SSL encryption is a double-edged sword. 90 percent of CIOs indicate they have experienced or experience a network attack using SSL encryption, and 87 percent say their security defenses are less effective today due to cybercriminals using encryption to hide their attacks.
5. Shortage of Cybersecurity Professionals
Finding IT security professionals with the knowledge and experience to implement and manage security solutions is a difficult task. Three-quarters of IT leaders believe they will face more security threats in the next five years due to a shortage of IT security talent.
