Global perspectives on cyber threats shift after pandemic wake-up call | The Paper Source University

Information technology firm Wipro has released a new report presenting the changing perspectives of cybersecurity globally.

The 2020 State of Cybersecurity Report explores the impact of COVID-19 on the cybersecurity landscape and provides recommendations of how organisations can improve their resilience to attacks.

According to the study, an increasing number of organisations and technology firms will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity mechanisms to address sophisticated cyberattacks and become more resilient.

The study found an increase in R&D, with 49% of the worldwide cybersecurity-related patents filed in the last four years being focussed on AI and machine learning (ML) applications.

Nearly half the organisations are expanding cognitive detection capabilities to tackle unknown attacks in their Security Operations Center (SOC).

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Other key study findings include:

• Nation state attacks targeting the private sector: 86% of all nation-state attacks fall under the espionage category, and 46% of them are targeted towards private companies.
• Cyber Hygiene proven difficult during remote work enablement: 70% of the organisations faced challenges in maintaining endpoint cyber hygiene and 57% in mitigating virtual private network (VPN) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) risks.
• Emerging post-COVID Cybersecurity priorities: 87% of the surveyed organisations are keen on implementing zero trust architecture and 87% are planning to scale up secure cloud migration.
• Low Confidence in Cyber Resilience: 59% of the organisations understand their cyber risks but only 23% of them are highly confident about preventing cyberattacks.
• Strong Cybersecurity spend due to Board Oversight & Regulations: 14% of organizations have a security budget of more than 12% of their overall IT budgets.
• Laying the foundation for a Cognitive SOC: 49% of organisations are adding cognitive detection capabilities to their SOC to tackle unknown attacks.
• Concerns about OT Infrastructure attacks increasing: 65% of organisations are performing log monitoring of Operation Technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices as a control to mitigate increased OT Risks.
• Fighting cyber-attacks demands stronger collaboration: 57% of organisations are willing to share only Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and 64% consider reputational risks to be a barrier to information sharing.
• Cyber-attack simulation exercises serve as a strong wakeup call: 60% participate in cyber simulation exercises coordinated by Industry regulators, National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTs) and third-party service providers and 79% organizations have dedicated cyber insurance policy in place.
• Communications: 71% of organizations consider cloud-hosting risk as a top risk.
• Energy, Natural Resources and Utilities: 71% organizations reported that OT/IT Integration would bring new risks.

Bhanumurthy B.M, president and chief operating officer, Wipro Limited, said: “There is a significant shift in global trends like rapid innovation to mitigate evolving threats, strict data privacy regulations and rising concern about breaches. Security is ever changing and the report brings more focus, enablement, and accountability on executive management to stay updated. Our research not only focuses on what happened during the pandemic but also provides foresight toward future cyber strategies in a post-COVID world.”

The study comprised 194 organisations and 21 partner academic, institutional and technology organisations over four months of research.

To access the full report, click here.