Three in four US companies don’t know how they fell victim to cyberattacks

Some 34 percent of  companies in the US were breached in the past 12 months, and 74 percent of the victims don’t know how it happened, shows a Bitdefender survey of IT execs

Two-thirds of companies would pay an average of $124k to avoid public shaming after a breach, while 14 percent would pay more than $500k, revealed the survey, conducted on 250 IT decision makers at companies with more than 1,000 PCs. In the minds of board members, IT decision makers in C-level suites deserve the blame for breaches.

IT decision makers need to head off unforeseen security risks that emerged in 2016 by adopting breakthrough technologies able to fight zero-day exploits, Advanced Persistent Threats, and other devastating types of cybercrime. Virtualization and growing adoption of hybrid environments have significantly increased the attack surface, causing more headaches when securing both physical and virtual infrastructures.

According to Bitdefender findings, IT decision makers will rise in companies’ hierarchies, as CEOs and board members face increasing internal and external security risks that could ruin customer trust and business forecasts. Still, not all C-suites include CIOs/CISOs in the business decision-making process.

A third of CIOs say their job has become more important in the company’s hierarchy. Another third even agree their job has been completely transformed in recent years.

Nine in 10 IT decision makers perceive IT security as a top priority for their companies. However, only two-thirds agree their IT security budget is sufficient.

Cloud security spending at 48 percent of the companies increased in the past year, while the IT security budget for other security activities remained the same, Bitdefender’s survey shows. While almost two-thirds of IT decision makers say the security budget is sufficient, the rest would need a future increase of 34 percent, on average, to deliver efficient IT security policies.

This is mainly because migrating information from traditional data centers to a cloud infrastructure has significantly increased companies’ attackable surface, giving rise to new threats and more worries fpr CIO offices regarding the safety of their data. From the total base of the IT decision makers, they say only 64 percent of cyberattacks can be stopped, detected or prevented with the current resources, on average.

The survey was conducted in October 2016, by iSense Solutions for Bitdefender on 250 IT security purchase professionals (CIOs / CEOs / CISOs – 26 percent, IT managers/directors – 56 percent, IT system administrators – 10 percent, IT support specialists -5 percent, and others), from enterprises with 1,000+ PCs based in the United States of America.