According to a new research by Gemalto, IT decision makers are over-confident in the ability of perimeter security to keep hackers at bay, but less so about keeping data safe. Many believe all their sensitive data to be secure despite not knowing where it is.
The security firm polled over 1,050 IT leaders worldwide and found 94% felt their perimeter security is effective in keeping unauthorised users out of their networks. Despite increasing number of data breaches and nearly 36.6 million data records being stolen in India in 2016, 98% IT professionals out of 100 interviewed believe are assured with perimeter security. In the UK that figure rose to 96%, with over half (58%) of respondents “extremely confident” that their data would be secure in the event of a breach; more than in any other country.
However, 65% are not extremely confident that their data would be protected should the perimeter be breached, down from 69% in the previous year. In the UK, 49 per cent are not extremely confident their data would be secure if perimeter defences were breached and 66% say unauthorised users can access their networks as they are protected with passwords which can be easier for hackers to crack, hack or guess their way into key accounts.
According to the findings of the fourth-annual Data Security Confidence Index released by Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, companies are under investing in technology that adequately protects their business. Given that almost half of UK businesses are reported to not have a formal cyber security strategy implemented, according to an IoD report, this should be seen as an extremely worrying set of beliefs. What’s more, three-quarters (75%) of the data stolen from UK businesses on average was not encrypted.
The report did find that 76% of organisations had increased investment in perimeter security technologies such as firewalls, IDPS, antivirus, content filtering, and anomaly detection to protect against external attacks, however, two third (68%) believe that unauthorised users could access their network, thus rendering their perimeter security ineffective.
This all paints a very sorry picture of the state of cyber security of businesses around the world.
