Earlier this year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the United States government advised companies to get their “Shields Up,” and prepare for current and future threats.
Now the White House is weighing in.
“Cyberattacks affect our day-to-day lives, our economy, and our national security,” President Joe Biden said in a recent proclamation. “Cybersecurity is not limited to Government or critical infrastructure. Hackers target Americans every day, and cybersecurity is about protecting the American people and the services we rely on.”
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month (October) is a good time to assess your company’s data security and data management needs. Start with the recently published The State of Data Security and Management Report 2022, which analyzed survey results from more than 2,000 IT and security decision-makers in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia and New Zealand.
Survey says… ransomware
As ransomware attacks continue to make global headlines, it’s not surprising that nearly half of respondents (47%) said their organization had been hit by ransomware in the past six months. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents believed the threat of ransomware in their industry has increased over the past year.
The inaugural report, commissioned by Cohesity and conducted by Censuswide, found two major gaps in security strategies that could put businesses at risk: reliance on legacy technology and a lack of cooperation among internal teams.
Leave legacy software in the past
Nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said their organization relies on primary backup and recovery infrastructure designed in, or before, 2010. To put that in perspective, in 2010:
- Apple released the first iPad
- Game of Thrones was “just” a book series, not a TV show
- You couldn’t order a Lyft or get DoorDash
Forget 2010. Go back another decade. About 5% of survey respondents said their backup and recovery infrastructure was built before the year 2000. In a world of exploding data growth and cyberattacks, would you trust software built around Y2K? Legacy software belongs in a museum, not in your organization.
In case you were wondering, Cohesity was founded in 2013.
What keeps internal teams up at night?
They say it takes teamwork to make the dream work. But according to the survey, the lack of collaboration between IT and SecOps teams is enough to keep them staring at the ceiling at night.
Almost one-third of SecOps respondents (31%) said their collaboration with IT wasn’t strong. Nine percent went so far as to call it “weak.” On the IT side, 13% said the collaboration with SecOps wasn’t strong.
What is the biggest barrier to getting their organization back up and running after a ransomware attack? Forty-one percent of total respondents said “integration between IT and security teams.”
Get the report to learn more
As you’ll see in the report, there’s work to be done all around to address the gaps that could put your business and security posture at risk. Let these insights from your peers inform you as you make upcoming decisions about your organization’s cyber resiliency. Don’t let securing and managing your data keep you up at night.
