Majority of cyber professionals ‘unhappy’ with security investments

Just four per cent of cyber crime professionals are happy with their enterprise’s cyber security investments as they express concerns that firms must do more to properly manage critical business data.

A poll of more than 1,250 cyber security professionals around the world, across a range of industries, found nearly 80 per cent of cyber professionals think enterprises need to understand the behaviours of people as they interact with intellectual property and other forms of data.

Some 28 per cent of those polled said critical business data and intellectual property can be found in BYOD devices, 25 per cent said it can be found in removable media and 21 per cent it can be found in public cloud services.

Nearly half of respondents (46 per cent) expressed concern about the effects of mixing use of personal and business applications on devices like smartphones.

Just seven per cent said they had good visibility into how employees use critical business data from company-owned and employee-owned devices, company-approved services like Microsoft Exchange and consumer services like Google Drive.

Email, mobile devices and cloud storage were deemed significant areas of concern for people interacting with critical business data and intellectual property.

Malware from phishing, breaches and BYOD contamination, along with inadvertent user behaviours were seen as the top risks (30 per cent each).

“For years, the cyber-security industry has focused primarily on securing technology infrastructures,” Matthew P. Moynahan, CEO at Forcepoint, told SC Media.

“The challenge with this approach, however, is that today's infrastructures are ever-changing in composition, access and ownership. By understanding how, where and why people touch confidential data and IP, businesses will be able to focus their investments and more effectively prioritise cyber-security initiatives.”