A report by the Ponemon Institute indicates that organizations face serious challenges in preventing and detecting cyber-attacks and prioritizing and investigating malware alerts. The report also found that cybersecurity threats are not getting the attention they deserve by senior executives. Released in March, “The State of Malware Detection & Prevention” is based on responses from 597 IT and IT security professionals who are responsible for directing cybersecurity activities and/or investments within their organizations.
The report has many interesting findings. Here are some excerpts:
- Only 39 percent of respondents rate their ability to detect a cyber attack as highly effective, and similarly only 30 percent rate their ability to prevent cyber attacks as highly effective.
- Respondents also say their organizations are doing poorly in prioritizing alerts and minimizing false positives…Only 17 percent of respondents rate their effectiveness in prioritizing alerts as highly effective.
- Sixty-three percent of respondents say their companies had one or more advanced attacks during the past 12 months. On average, it took 170 days to detect an advanced attack, 39 days to contain and 43 days to remediate an advanced attack.
- On average 29 percent of all malware alerts received by their security operations team are investigated and an average of 40 percent are considered to be false positives.
- Only 36 percent of respondents say IT security and others who are responsible for security have the necessary information to make the C-suite aware of the potential risk posed by advanced threats and whether or not the organization has a strong cybersecurity posture. Because senior executives are not informed, it is understandable that less than half of respondents (47 percent) say these executives are concerned about cyber attacks against their companies.
The report also notes that 34 percent of respondents say C-level executives are never updated on security incidents.