In Proofpoint’s 2024 Voice of the CISO report, the cybersecurity firm discovered that CISOs are coping with people-centric threats greater than ever. Plus, cybersecurity budgets usually don’t change, and AI may help and harm CISOs’ efforts.
Relating to the precise risk dangers, 41% of the CISOs principally worry ransomware assaults, adopted by malware (38%), e-mail fraud (36%), cloud account compromise (34%), insider risk (30%) and distributed denial of service (30%) assaults.
For this report, the analysis agency Censuswide surveyed 1,600 CISOs from organizations of 1,000 workers or extra throughout completely different industries in 16 international locations.
CISOs’ foremost people-centric safety issues
In line with the survey, extra CISOs than ever consider human error is the most important vulnerability for his or her organizations; 74% of the CISOs really feel this fashion, up from 60% in 2023.
As well as, 80% of CISOs see human danger as a key cybersecurity concern over the following two years, up from 63% in 2023. That is the place AI comes into play, as 87% of CISOs want to deploy AI-powered applied sciences to combat human vulnerability and block human-centric cyber threats.
Regarding threats additionally embrace malicious insiders (36%) and compromised insiders (33%).
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Information loss occasions and risk mitigation
Negligent or careless workers are seen as the most important trigger of information loss occasions for CISOs (42%) over exterior assaults (40%). In line with the Proofpoint report, 73% of CISOs added their information loss occasions had been brought on by workers leaving their group.
The results of those information loss occasions are principally monetary loss (43%), post-attack restoration prices (41%) and lack of crucial information (40%).
SEE: CISOs in Australia Urged to Take a Nearer Have a look at Information Breach Dangers
To combat the info loss drawback, many CISOs educate their workers about pc safety finest practices (53%), use cloud safety options (52%), deploy information loss prevention know-how (51%), endpoint safety (49%), e-mail safety (48%) or isolation know-how (42%).
This adoption of DLP has surged from 35% to 51% in a yr, with the end result being 81% of CISOs believing their information is nicely protected.
Should-read safety protection
An growing variety of cybersecurity threats
Proofpoint said the assault floor of organizations has by no means been bigger for varied causes, together with hybrid work has change into an ordinary, whereas reliance on cloud know-how has grown. Additionally, workers have change into more and more cell, usually taking information with them when altering jobs.
Seventy % of CISOs really feel their group will most likely face a cloth cyberattack over the following 12 months, with 31% considering it is rather seemingly. The CISOs from the U.S., Canada and South Korea are probably the most involved about experiencing such an assault.
Synthetic intelligence helps CISOs but in addition cybercriminals
As famous earlier, most CISOs surveyed want to deploy AI-powered applied sciences to assist them defend their group, even when they’re nonetheless at an early stage. Proofpoint wrote, “Even in these early levels, we are able to already join the dots between exterior threats, delicate content material and anomalous behaviors or exercise. That’s one thing that has not been doable on the identical velocity and scale with human moderation or conventional evaluation.”
SEE: Google Cloud’s Nick Godfrey Talks Safety, Finances and AI for CISOs
But AI additionally advantages cybercriminals, rendering their assaults simpler to scale, and strategies that had been solely deployed by nation-state risk actors or well-funded cybercriminal teams are actually out there for lower-skilled attackers. Greater than half of the CISOs (54%) assume AI poses some type of safety danger to their group.
Strain about cybersecurity budgets
The economic system has had an affect on organizations, in line with 59% of the surveyed CISOs. Plus, CISOs are pressured to do extra or at the least the identical for much less, with safety budgets remaining flat at finest. Forty-eight % of the CISOs have been requested to chop workers, delay backfills or scale back spending.
CISOs’ prime precedence in line with their finances is now bettering data safety and enabling larger enterprise innovation (58%) barely forward of bettering worker cybersecurity consciousness (54%).
CISOs’ issues embrace burnout and insurance coverage
Along with the budget-related stress, 66% of CISOs really feel expectations on them are unrealistic. This quantity is repeatedly growing (61% for 2023), as additionally they really feel their issues are unanswered. This all leads to low job satisfaction, with 53% of the CISOs experiencing or witnessing burnout up to now yr.
Sixty-six % of CISOs are additionally involved with private, monetary and authorized legal responsibility of their function, fearing an absence of safety of their job. And, 72% of CISOs wouldn’t be a part of a corporation that might not provide them administrators and officers insurance coverage or related safety within the occasion of a profitable cyberattack.
A brilliant spot: CISOs’ relationships with board members
Eighty-four % of CISOs reported they’ve eye-to-eye contacts with their board members, whereas solely 51% reported such contact in 2022 and 62% in 2023. These contacts have led to a larger understanding from the board members.
Disclosure: I work for Development Micro, however the views expressed on this article are mine.