Member Article

90 percent of big business have been breached

A Lloyds of London study has revealed that 90 percent of big businesses across Europe have been hit by a significant cyber-attack in the last five years. What’s more alarming is that, despite this, less than half of those organisations worried about being hit by another attack in the future.

“In this day and age, businesses – irrespective of size – simply cannot afford to be complacent when it comes to cybersecurity,” said Trevor Dearing, ‎EMEA Marketing Director at Gigamon. “The fact that so many businesses believe they are secure, even though they have previously reported cyber-attacks, just goes to show the level of disconnect and confusion that unfortunately plagues so many organisations when it comes to their cybersecurity position. The number and severity of data breaches is definitely increasing every day, and as critical infrastructure continues to move online, businesses are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats. Despite our best defences, hackers are not just getting through, they are staying undetected on corporate networks for longer. To combat this, organisations and security vendors must ditch the complacency and instead fight smarter, in a more joined up way to identify, isolate and eliminate cyber threats faster.”

This comes hot on the heels of a report by Juniper Research into attitudes towards cybersecurity and cyber-attacks among British SMEs and enterprises. Juniper revealed that three quarters of companies feel they are currently secure, even though half of those businesses also reported having previously experienced a cyber-attack.

The study also found that despite increased concern and spend on cybersecurity over the last year, there is a high degree of complacency, with few common practices in response to this threat.

“As the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force and fines increase, this ability to identify and eliminate cyber-attacks will become even more important,” continued Dearing. To avoid becoming the next data breach headline or paying hefty industry fines, organisations need to constantly examine the way that their data security models are deployed and managed. In practice, this must begin with ensuring full, pervasive visibility into everything that’s happening across their networks – a task that cloud computing, mobile, virtualisation and IoT has made harder than ever.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gigamon .