ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 9, 2014
/PRNewswire/ -- More than 80 percent of security leaders
believe the challenge posed by external threats is on the rise,
while 60 percent also agree their organizations are outgunned in
the cyber war, according to findings released today by IBM (NYSE:
IBM). The study additionally reveals that technology is seen
as a critical component in addressing these security issues and
threats, with big data, cloud and mobile named as the most
significant areas of prioritization.
IBM's third annual Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
study was conducted by the IBM Center for Applied Insights and is
based on responses from 138 in-depth interviews with the surveyed
organizations most senior security leaders. Sophisticated
external threats were identified by 40 percent of security leaders
as their top challenge with regulations coming in a distant second
at just under 15 percent. As enterprise leaders continue to outline
business priorities, external threats will require the most
organizational effort over the next three to five years – as much
as regulations, new technologies, and internal threats
combined.
"CISOs are finally getting a seat in the Boardroom," said
Brendan Hannigan, General Manager,
IBM Security. "Security leaders must now use this growing influence
to deliver better results: prioritizing the protection of critical
assets, focusing investments on intelligence and recruiting top
industry talent to augment internal efforts."
Today's Organizations Rethinking Cybersecurity
Tactics
The study aimed to uncover and understand how organizations are
currently protecting themselves against cyber attacks, finding 70
percent of security leaders believe they have mature, traditional
technologies that focus on network intrusion prevention, advanced
malware detection and network vulnerability scanning.
However, nearly half (50 percent) agree that deploying new
security technology is the top focus area for their organization,
and they identified data leakage prevention, cloud security and
mobile/device security as the top three areas in need of dramatic
transformation.
Additional findings from the IBM CISO study include:
- Cloud Security Continues to Lead the
Agenda: While concern over cloud security remains strong, close
to 90 percent of respondents have adopted cloud or are currently
planning cloud initiatives. Of this group, 75 percent expect their
cloud security budget to increase or increase dramatically over the
next three to five years.
- Data Driven Security Intelligence
Capabilities are Top of Mind: Over 70 percent of security
leaders said real-time security intelligence is increasingly
important to their organization. Despite this strong agreement, the
study found areas such as data classification and discovery and
security intelligence analytics have relatively low maturity (54
percent) and require a higher need for improvement or
transformation.
- Significant Mobile Security Needs Still
Remain: Despite the growing mobile workforce, only 45 percent
of security leaders stated they have an effective mobile device
management approach. In fact, according to the study, mobile and
device security ranked at the bottom of the maturity list (51
percent).
Managing Uncertainty around Government Landscape
In addition to external threats, the study indicated CISOs face
additional challenges from governments as nearly 80 percent of
respondents said the potential risk from regulations and standards
have increased over the past three years. Security leaders are most
uncertain about whether governments will handle security governance
on a national or global level as well as how transparent they will
be in doing so. Only 22 percent think that a global approach to
combating cybercrime will be agreed upon in the next three to five
years.
Empowering Today's Security Leaders
With cyber attacks and government regulations continuing to
evolve, a majority of organizations have redefined their view of
security over the past three years, vaulting security leaders into
more influential roles. According to the study, 90 percent of
security leaders strongly agree that they have significant
influence in their organization, with 76 percent stating that their
degree of influence has significantly increased in the last three
years. In addition, 71 percent strongly agree that they are
receiving the organizational support that they need in order to do
their jobs effectively.
About the Assessment
To obtain an understanding of security leaders' current
conditions and views of the future landscape, the IBM Center for
Applied Insights, in collaboration with IBM Security, conducted
in-depth interviews with 138 security leaders – the senior-most IT
and line-of-business executives responsible for information
security in their organizations. Some of these leaders carried the
title of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), but given the
diversity of organizational structures, some did not. Others
interviewed included CIOs, VPs of IT Security and Security
Directors. Sixty-three percent of organizations interviewed had a
named CISO. Participation spanned a broad range of industries and
five different countries. To download the report please visit
www.ibm.com/security/ciso.
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/ibmcai, follow
@IBMCAI on Twitter or visit the IBM Center for Applied Insights
blog.
About IBM Security
IBM's security platform provides the security intelligence to
help organizations holistically protect their people, data,
applications and infrastructure. IBM offers solutions for identity
and access management, security information and event management,
database security, application development, risk management,
endpoint management, next-generation intrusion protection and more.
IBM operates one of the world's broadest security research and
development, and delivery organizations.
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/security, follow
@IBMSecurity on Twitter or visit the IBM Security Intelligence
blog.
Contacts:
Michael
Rowinski
IBM Media Relations, Security
1 (720) 395-8497
rowinski@us.ibm.com
Charisse Higgins
IBM External Relations
1 (347) 266-7540
cthiggin@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM