Cybersecurity is one of the few industries that have experienced uninterrupted growth in the last 20 years. Similar to how data volumes never decrease, and cybersecurity threats never go away.
As companies engage with digital processes, more data centers are built around the world, and more information assets are retained electronically, the risk of cybercrime, involuntary disclosure and other forms of use are increased Improper.
Lack of qualified staff
Therefore, the significant demand for qualified personnel and that there is not enough supply to meet that demand is not surprising. Recent research confirms that the gap in the cybersecurity workforce has widened to more than 2.9 million worldwide, and about 150,000 in EMEA alone.
In addition, nearly two-thirds of cybersecurity professionals say that the growing workforce gap is putting their organizations at risk, as key cybersecurity positions and functions are left understaffed and incident response is delayed due to the lack of skilled workers to work on the task.
The cybersecurity skills gap is also illustrative of the diversity gap in the sector. For example, only a quarter of the cybersecurity workforce is female, meaning there is a lot of untapped potential that has not yet entered the sector.
The qualification of more female professionals in cybersecurity is an opportunity to make even greater progress in the challenge of diversity, while addressing a large part of the overall shortage of skilled labor.
Differentiation
Lack of staff is a serious problem that is heightened by the number of organizations still not being prepared to respond to cybersecurity incidents, as 31% does not have an incident response plan for Cybersecurity.
While companies that can respond quickly and efficiently to contain a cyberattack within thirty days save more than $1 million in the total cost of a data gap on average, deficiencies in proper planning of the incident response have remained consistent for the past four years.
For example, secdo offers a preventative incident response platform designed to help security teams reduce response time in minutes, manage attacks immediately without affecting business continuity, and strengthen the company’s defenses against future attacks.
Of organizations that have a plan in place, nearly half (49%) do not test their plans regularly, leaving them less prepared to effectively manage complex processes and coordination that must take place after an attack.
This lack of preparation stems from a lack of investment that companies make in cybersecurity. More than half of companies say that their business budget spends only 10% in cybersecurity, especially it infrastructure and asset management.
This number translates to a range of approximately 0.2% to 0.9% of the company’s revenue and, further by, between $1,300 and $3,000 in cybersecurity per full-time or equivalent employee.
Larger companies allocated nearly a fifth of their cybersecurity budget to identity and access management, nearly double the percentage of medium and small enterprises, which tend to spend more on endpoint and network security. However, the most successful programs exhibit several main features in common:
- Defining the security strategy starting at the top of the organization.
Lack of management support or inadequate financing is the biggest challenge in cyber management by companies with a lower level of maturity in risk management. Those boards and boards of directors considered to be the most successful are more interested in almost all areas of cybersecurity.
- Raise the cybersecurity profile beyond IT to provide high-level attention to the security function and greater influence.
More mature institutions are more likely to elevate the role of cybersecurity by completely separating cybersecurity from IT. To drive the effective execution of a “cyber risk control” program, executive management must structure its leadership team to drive communication and implementation of security across the enterprise, and have the authority and experience to do so.
- Align cybersecurity efforts with the company’s business strategy.
The prolific impact of cyberspace on organizational strategy, planning, and execution of operational or performance efforts should not be underestimated. Incorporating cyber professionals into companies can enable the cyber organization and its leaders to be more strategic and better manage cyber risk across the enterprise.
How should organizations be prevented?
So far there has been talk of a lack of budget and a strategic line previously defined as the main pitfalls that companies must overcome in terms of cybersecurity, however, what is the main enemy of cybersecurity of a Company?
Corporate executives see human error as one of the biggest risks to information security, so the most common response is to invest more in the workforce through training and hiring than in technology over the next two years , although it is clear that this action is not carried out as often as it should.
Less common is investing in new types of software with enhanced security, upgrading infrastructure, or buying artificial intelligence and machine learning for use in security, all of which could help minimize human error. However, there are other risk factors to which companies are subject.
Faced with these problems, more than 80% companies believe that autonomous technologies improve security and increase confidence in the way companies handle sensitive information.
Autonomous technology combines automation with artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver self-driving, self-assurance, and self-healing capabilities that can be integrated into a company’s core IT infrastructure.
However, only 23% of the companies claim to be users of this technology, while the 77% claims that their organizations only use automation moderately.
The lack of automation tools is a missed opportunity to strengthen cyber resilience, as organizations that have fully implemented security automation save up to $1.5 million in total cost data breach, in contrast to organizations that do not take advantage of automation.
While better training may be the most common tool for cybersecurity issues, it will never be enough. “People make mistakes. It is human nature”, which is why experts advise incorporating some robots, in the form of autonomous technologies, with artificial intelligence and machine learning, to help these people.
The company Hunters.AI, stands out as a pioneer in the autonomous search for threats. Its main mission is to accelerate the response to cyber threats and combat cybercrime by helping organizations detect, identify and remedy sophisticated cyberattacks targeting their cloud, hybrid and enterprise environments, through the artificial intelligence.
Privacy, a point that cannot be overlooked
On the other hand, organizations finally recognize that collaboration between privacy and cybersecurity teams can improve cyber resiliency, the 62% indicating that aligning these computers is essential to achieve resilience.
Most companies believe that the privacy feature is increasingly important, especially with the emergence of new regulations such as GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (in the United States), and are prioritizing data protection over the make IT purchasing decisions.
When companies are asked what the main factor is to justify spending on cybersecurity, 56% says the loss or theft of information. This is particularly relevant as consumers require companies to do more to actively protect their data.
According to a recent survey, 78% of organizations say a company’s ability to keep its data private is extremely important, and only 20% consumers fully trust the organizations they interact with to maintain the privacy of your data.
Conclusions
Cybersecurity has long been a field that has embraced people with non-traditional backgrounds. Almost no cybersecurity professional over 30 years old has a degree in cybersecurity.
However, asking too much of potential professionals is not the only reason behind the severe shortage of cyber labor. In general, corporations do very little to help their cyber employees stay technically up-to-date, let alone when it comes to helping their IT employees collaborate.
However, even if companies experienced a massive increase in non-traditional candidates, the shortage of cybersecurity skills will not end in the short term. For this reason, companies will need to look for alternative solutions. Today, many seek the promise of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning as a way to bridge the gap.
There is no end in sight for the cybersecurity gap crisis, so organizations will have to raise the issue differently. Solving this problem requires a different way of thinking, and that is that organizations cannot rely solely on technology or their employees, as separate entities, but will have to find ways to put the two aspects together and unite them in a strategy of cybersecurity, solid and previously defined.
