99% of UK organisations suffered security breaches in the past one year

The survey, conducted by Opinion Matters and commissioned by VMware Carbon Black, gauged responses from 251 UK CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs from UK organisations on the nature and frequency of cyber attacks targeting their organisations, whether they suffered breaches as a result, and how prepared they are to defend against future attacks.

While 98% of those surveyed said that attack volumes have increased in the last 12 months, 99% of them said their business has suffered a security breach in the last 12 months, with the average organisation experiencing 63 breaches in the period.

Even though 96% of the respondents also said that cyber attacks have become more sophisticated, only 6% said they plan to increase cyber defence spending in the coming year. Security professionals also admitted their organisations are using more than eight different tools or consoles on average to manage their cyber defence programme, thereby making their environments complex and hard-to-manage.

“Siloed, hard-to-manage environments hand the advantage to attackers from the start. Evidence shows that attackers have the upper hand when security is not an intrinsic feature of the environment. As the cyber threat landscape reaches saturation, it is time for rationalisation, strategic thinking and clarity over security deployment,” said Rick McElroy, Cyber Security Strategist at VMware Carbon Black.

93% of UK organisations targeted by COVID-19 malware

A supplemental survey focussed on the impact COVID-19 has had on the attack landscape found that as many as 93% of UK organisations have been targeted by COVID-19-related malware, with 88% of security professionals also sharing that they witnessed increased phishing attacks and increased IoT exposure.

The marked increase in phishing campaigns exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to target organisations has also exposed serious loopholes in organisations’ existing defences and disaster recovery plans. In response to the survey, 89% of respondents reported gaps in recovery planning, ranging from slight to severe, and 88% said they had uncovered gaps in IT operations.

83% of those surveyed…

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