New Report Finds IT Cybersecurity Shortage Hurting Companies In Fight Against Ransomware

A new report from CyberEdge Group, a research and marketing firm serving the cybersecurity industry’s top vendors, has found that ransomware incidents are at an all-time high, with one-third of victims paying the ransom associated with an attack.

A press release detailed the results of the fourth annual Cyberthreat Defense Report, which includes findings from 1,100 IT security decision makers and practitioners from 15 countries, six continents and 19 industries.

The report’s key findings were that network breaches are on the rise and malware is becoming a growing problem. In addition, nine out of 10 respondents reported their company is feeling the impact of a global shortage of skilled IT security personnel, which makes them more susceptible to an attack.

In fact, a whopping 61 percent of responding organizations were compromised by ransomware in 2016. And while one in five is unsatisfied with the protection available through Microsoft’s for securing Office 365 deployments, many employees admit that they are not doing all they can to secure their employers’ networks, citing “low security awareness among employees” as a top response, followed by “lack of skilled personnel” and “too much data to analyze.”

“The findings of CyberEdge’s latest Cyberthreat Defense Report are consistent with what we’re seeing in the industry,” said Mike Rothman, president of Securosis. “There are more attacks, more sophisticated malware, and more complexity ahead relative to skyrocketing cloud usage, all making it more challenging to execute on a security program. This difficulty is compounded by the global security skills shortage and the ongoing inability for most employees to not click on links that compromise their devices. On the positive front, budgets continue to increase and security initiatives are very high profile, consistently getting boardroom visibility. So all in all, it’s the best of times and the worst of times for security folks.”