Nearly 90 percent of organizations hit by a data breach

Hackers continue to gain the upper hand in the battle for data security, with an astounding 87 percent of organizations saying they were the victims of cyberattacks in the past 12 months.



That is one of the findings in the new study “Threats Below the Surface Report,” which surveyed more than 3,000 IT professionals on the security risks, priorities and capabilities that are top-of-mind. The study also found that one in three organizations reported that they had been hacked more than five times in the past 12 months, double the rate of 2014.

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One of the leading causes of the rise in data security risks is the rapid adoption of cloud computing, the study indicates.

“Enterprise cloud apps lack critical controls for data security that could significantly reduce the risk of a breach,” said Nat Kausik, chief executive officer at Bitglass, which co-produced the study along with the CyberEdge Group and Information Security Community. “While some organizations can identify potential leaks after the fact, few organizations can remediate threats in real time.”

Kausik shared a number of dramatic statistics regarding data breaches and cyber preparedness:

• 54 percent of organizations hit with a ransonware attack were able to recover without paying up.

• 52 percent of organizations expect to increase their overall information security budgets.

• 39 percent of organizations in retail and 36 percent in technology are spending a larger portion of their budgets on information security than in other vertical markets.

• 37 percent said phishing is a top security concern, followed by insider threats (cited by 33 percent) and malware (32 percent)

• 36 percent of organizations monitor mobile devices

• 24 percent of organizations monitor SaaS and IaaS apps for security risks

The study also found that 62 percent of organizations that have adopted the cloud say improved threat detection is the most critical threat management capability. Other capabilities most in demand include data encryption (cited by 72 percent), traffic encryption (cited by 60 percent) and access controls (cited by 56 percent).

As for cloud-specific concerns, the issues that organizations are struggling with the most include data leakage (cited by 57 percent), data privacy (cited by 49 percent), confidentiality (cited by 47 percent) and compliance (cited by 36 percent).