IT pros are playing cat and mouse with cybercriminals

IT professionals admit to feeling lost when it comes to trying to protect the company against cyber attacks and cybercriminals. This could be a big problem for all of us, as 41 percent of IT professionals believe it is only a matter of time before there is a major cyber attack against the United Kingdom’s critical national infrastructure. A further, 17 percent are simply not convinced it will not happen.

According to the research by OnePoll, 30 percent of IT departments admit they have to turn a blind eye to critical security vulnerabilities because they just do not have the time or tools to sort them out, and 28 percent said they need more sophisticated tools to help them make sense of the deluge of data.

The research found that the consequences of the growing onslaught of cyber attacks against today’s companies have resulted in the following:

• 55 percent said that they cannot or do not know if they can truthfully assure the Board that they are secure.
• 51 percent of IT professionals could not walk into a board meeting and provide the board with key performance indicators to show what level of success their investment is having in defending the network against the hacking community.
• Only 40 percent are sure that IT personnel and the Board speak the same language and get the budgets they need. The remaining 60 percent were not so sure.
• 44 percent of companies just do not know or cannot answer if they are being hacked because their systems are so overloaded with data they cannot pinpoint cyber attacks.
• 43 percent claim to have visibility into their global network. The other 57 percent are not so sure. Therefore, a majority of them are having to fight against threats as if they were blindfolded.

“It’s pretty clear that the majority of today’s companies just don’t have enough visibility into their networks and therefore don’t know what needs protecting and what doesn’t,” said Parveen Jain, CEO at RedSeal Networks. “We often see major corporations being attacked day in and day out, but since they don’t have full understanding of their infrastructure security weaknesses and risk gaps, they don’t know where and how to put up their defences.”

When asked whether they felt as though they are losing a fighting battle against the cybercriminals, a third agreed they were playing a perpetual game of cat and mouse when it came to defending their systems. They also felt that they can never catch up with the cybercriminals.

Jain concludes, “The cybercriminal community knows that companies are overwhelmed with too much data and don’t have the resources or tools to protect their most valuable assets, so they take advantage of the weak spots. Our advice is to utilise automated solutions such as RedSeal Networks, so that you can hone in on the vital vulnerable data with actionable intelligence. This way, IT can get visualisation of their end-to-end network security architecture, enabling them to defend their systems against today’s sophisticated cyber attacks. Then, when all goes well, IT can get their Christmas bonus!”