The cybersecurity firm FireEye has released its inaugural FireEye Cyber Trendscape Report, revealing that the majority (56%) of organizations believe that the risk of cyber threats will increase in 2020.
To compile its report, the firm surveyed over 800 CISOs and other senior executives across North America, Europe and Asia to better understand their attitudes towards some of the most prevalent topics in cybersecurity today.
Of those surveyed, half of global respondents (50%) said that their organization is not covered by cyber insurance. Germany had the second highest level of respondents without cyber insurance at 60 percent which is quite higher than in the UK (32%) and France (43%).
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Fines stemming from compliance regulations such as GDPR were the second least chosen by respondents from a list of nine potential concerns and FireEye's survey found that 24 percent of global respondents identified these fines as a worry. In the UK, 39 percent of respondents said these fines were a worry, followed by 22 percent in Germany and 19 percent in France. However, the loss of sensitive data was the biggest concern globally as well as in three of the European countries that were surveyed.
Cyber threats
FireEye also found that lack of cybersecurity training remains an issue with one in five (21%) of German respondents admitting that their organizations lack any cybersecurity training at all. This figure is far higher than the global average of 11 percent as well as in France (1%) and the UK (10%).
According to the report, one in ten UK organizations (11%) said that they don't have any cyberattack or breach response plans. This was the third highest of all countries behind Canada (19%) and Japan (15%). However, at the same time, the German response was five percent and just two percent of respondents in France said they have no plans for a cyberattack or breach response while the global average was eight percent.
When it comes to emerging technologies, 86 percent of global respondents reported they had set up blockchain initiatives. However, 21 percent of German respondents said that they had not researched blockchain and do not consider it a priority. This is compared to 10 percent in France and 14 percent in the UK. In each of the three countries though, 40 percent of respondents said they had started an initiative to better understand AI and AI security.
Global security strategist at FireEye, Eric Ouellet provided further insight on the report's findings, saying:
“An interesting aspect of this new research is that it shines a light on the different attitudes that influence how individuals and organisations approach cybersecurity across the world. One attitude that emerged which people should reconsider is letting compliance dictate security standards when actually they should be aiming for a higher level of protection. For example, the report found that 29 percent of organisations had informal training programs on an ‘as needed’ basis that are focused on meeting core compliance requirements. It’s likely that the organisations which are taking a more comprehensive approach in this area and others are better equipped to deal with security threats.”
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