‘Rising data theft worries IT professionals’
TECHDIGEST – IT professionals have listed data exfiltration, theft by an external attacker, as one of the top threats that will affect organisations in 2023, according to a new report by Sophos.
The report, titled ‘The State of Cybersecurity 2023: The Business Impact of Adversaries on Defenders’, disclosed that 99 per cent of the IT professionals surveyed stated that they were concerned about affecting their organisations in 2023.
The IT experts singled out data exfiltration and phishing as their major concerns for the year.
It noted, “It’s important to remember that these three threats are often interlinked: a phishing email often starts an attack that results in data exfiltration and ransomware.”
The firm said about 94 per cent of the firm it surveyed experienced some sort of cyberattack in 2022.
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It said, “The concerns of IT professionals closely match the reality of what is happening on the front lines with 94 per cent of organisations experiencing at least one cyberattack in the last year.
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“While ransomware was the most reported attack, adversaries execute a wide range of attacks at scale. This breadth and depth of attacks create a considerable and growing challenge for defenders. Behind these numbers is the increasing professionalisation of the cybercriminal economy, including the growth of the ‘as a service’ model, including ‘access-as-a-service’, ‘phishing-as-a-service’, and ‘scamming-as-a-service.’
“This evolution in cybercrime operations has lowered the barriers to entry for would-be cybercriminals.”
While there was observed growth in the sophistication of cybercriminals, surveyed IT professionals revealed that the in-house shortage of cybersecurity skills/expertise will be a major threat in 2023.
The study revealed that most surveyed organisations struggled with the day-to-day delivery of core security operations tasks.
The Field CTO, commercial, Sophos, John Shier, added, “Today’s threats require a timely and coordinated response.
“Unfortunately, too many organisations are stuck in reactive mode. Not only is this having an impact on core business priorities, but it also has a sizeable human toll, with over half of respondents stating that cyberattacks are keeping them up at night. Eliminating the guesswork and applying defensive controls based on actionable intelligence will let IT teams focus on enabling the business instead of trying to douse the eternal flame of active attacks.”
