Survey Reveals 96% of Businesses Don’t Think They Are Adequately Prepared for a Cyber Attack, Are You?

The information security community will not be surprised by news reported today by the Telegraph revealing that cyber-attacks are the primary threat to UK businesses. No longer a case of if businesses will be attacked but when, the realisation is a big concern to industry.

A recent survey by EY shows that a massive 96% of UK businesses fear that their security would not be strong enough to withstand an attack. The main hurdles highlighted by the 1,900 senior executives surveyed are budget restraints (69%), lack of skilled resources (66%) and a lack of executive awareness and support (28%) .

With 66% saying they have seen a 5% increase in security incidents this year, Mark Brown, Information Security Editor at EY said,

“Organisations must undertake more proactive thinking, with tone-from-the-top support. Greater emphasis on improving employee awareness, increasing budgets and devoting more resources to innovating security solutions is needed."

(image downloaded from www.sxc.hu image ID:806151)  

Titania’s Advice

A combination of scanning tools, manual audits and configuration analysis tools can help overcome some security issues and achieve a greater depth of security. Configuration analysis tools, such as Nipper Studio, produce vulnerability audits that are much more detailed than a scanner can achieve. They analyse the devices from the inside, looking at the way the device is actually configured. This helps to maintain an expert level of network security surveillance between manual audits, reducing the risk of breaches and the potential time and costs associated.