Research conducted by ThriveDX Enterprise reveals that cybersecurity awareness has risen to 97% amongst organizations across the globe.
Naturally, a rise in cybersecurity awareness is not the same as being fully equipped to deal with cybersecurity breaches, but it’s always nice to see headway being made. Honestly, this sort of headway is both severely needed and long overdue; cybercriminals have always been multiple steps ahead of the curve in terms of exploiting old weaknesses and identifying new ones in security systems. We hear about breaches on a near-daily basis, whether they be conducted by targeting a major safeguard, or by exploiting a single, hapless employee working for a big organization. Either way, some awareness was long-needed, and we should just be glad that it’s now on the way.
Past research has proven that many cybersecurity breaches are conducted by exploiting employee unawareness (approximately 91%, to be specific), and therefore future groundwork needs are laid for the education and further training of such individuals. Of course, when I say employee, it should go without saying that upper management is just as unintentionally complicit in these schemes as a grassroots worker. Perhaps even more so, considering that such individuals typically have access to sensitive information that isn’t commonly shared with other individuals. 58% of all surveyed companies have even implemented awareness sessions for their workforce, and 42% have even provided them with tools to counter potential breaches such as the Phishing Incident Button. 27% conduct over seven mock-phishing simulations every year, and one-fifth of the total sample population conducted at least one per year. Honestly, while the increase is nice, many of these are still very insignificant numbers, and further practical headway needs to be made.
Even this amount of progress has resulted in a net positive effect and a very notable one at that. 58% of the surveyed employees believed that they had experienced increased awareness about mission statements, policies, and metrics in place. 65% also believed that much more work still needed to be conducted from a cybersecurity perspective to make a truly significant difference in the number of breaches occurring.
Read next: 41% of Cyber Attacks Are Now Done Through Cloud Servers, New Data Reveals
Naturally, a rise in cybersecurity awareness is not the same as being fully equipped to deal with cybersecurity breaches, but it’s always nice to see headway being made. Honestly, this sort of headway is both severely needed and long overdue; cybercriminals have always been multiple steps ahead of the curve in terms of exploiting old weaknesses and identifying new ones in security systems. We hear about breaches on a near-daily basis, whether they be conducted by targeting a major safeguard, or by exploiting a single, hapless employee working for a big organization. Either way, some awareness was long-needed, and we should just be glad that it’s now on the way.
Past research has proven that many cybersecurity breaches are conducted by exploiting employee unawareness (approximately 91%, to be specific), and therefore future groundwork needs are laid for the education and further training of such individuals. Of course, when I say employee, it should go without saying that upper management is just as unintentionally complicit in these schemes as a grassroots worker. Perhaps even more so, considering that such individuals typically have access to sensitive information that isn’t commonly shared with other individuals. 58% of all surveyed companies have even implemented awareness sessions for their workforce, and 42% have even provided them with tools to counter potential breaches such as the Phishing Incident Button. 27% conduct over seven mock-phishing simulations every year, and one-fifth of the total sample population conducted at least one per year. Honestly, while the increase is nice, many of these are still very insignificant numbers, and further practical headway needs to be made.
Even this amount of progress has resulted in a net positive effect and a very notable one at that. 58% of the surveyed employees believed that they had experienced increased awareness about mission statements, policies, and metrics in place. 65% also believed that much more work still needed to be conducted from a cybersecurity perspective to make a truly significant difference in the number of breaches occurring.
Read next: 41% of Cyber Attacks Are Now Done Through Cloud Servers, New Data Reveals
