Phishing and cloud top cyber security concerns

Written by Peter Walker

30/04/19

The biggest security threats that worry companies are phishing (29 per cent) and cloud security (27 per cent) according to a survey carried out at the recent RSA Conference.

AT&T Cybersecurity spoke to 733 attendees across a variety of sectors, from financial services to healthcare, retail to manufacturing, finding that social media threats were the third most worrisome threat (16 per cent).

Digging into the findings, large enterprises were found to be more aligned with stakeholders within the company. Of the industries, retail was the most negative in terms of seeing eye-to-eye with stakeholders, with 17 percent of participants stating, ‘not at all’ and 43 percent stating that they only saw eye to eye with stakeholders ‘sometimes’.

Only 17 per cent of smaller enterprises are very confident in defending against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, compared to 29 per cent of large enterprises. Additionally, only, 15 per cent of smaller enterprises are very confident in defending against Internet of Things attacks, compared to 21 per cent of large enterprises.

The majority of companies view supply chain security as an essential component of any security function (37 per cent), although 18 per cent of smaller companies feel these activities take away resources from important work, while 19 per cent believe it merely serves as a ‘tick box’ activity.

Security consultant and report author Javvad Malik commented that thought needs to be given to the size of the company and the amount of resources it has at its disposal.

“Having the right people can be the difference between being cyber-prepared or not,” he continued, noting that it doesn’t necessarily mean hiring an entire security department. “Sometimes, all an organisation needs is a consultant to help provide guidance and steer them towards best security practices to ensure security is built right from the beginning.”