A new survey by cloud computing firm ServiceNow has revealed that the majority of chief information security officers (CISOs) are unable to keep pace with data breaches.
ServiceNow commissioned Oxford Economics to survey 300 CISOs and found that more than 80% believe data breaches in their company are going unaddressed.
Survey respondents were based in Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, the UK and the US. They represent companies ranging in size from $500m in revenue to over $10bn.
About 78% said they are concerned that they don’t have the ability to even identify data, and when they are able to detect potential cybersecurity events, 70% admit they struggle to prioritise the security events depending on business criticality.
More than one in 10 CISOs reported that their organisation suffered a significant breach within the past three years that lead to reputational or financial loss.
Just 19% rated their company as being highly effective in avoiding security breaches and only 38% of CISOs believe they are highly effective at protecting against breaches of customer credit card or financial data.
Read more: Almost half of UK business has NO cyber security plan
Manual processes and a lack of resources were cited as barriers by more than 25% of CISOs to their organisation’s ability to identify and respond to security breaches.
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Only 7% of CISOs said their employees have developed the skills required to successfully prioritise security threats.
ServiceNow security business unit general manager Sean Convery said: “CISOs are spending an increasing amount on preventing and detecting data breaches, but our research underscores that response is where they should focus.
“Automating and orchestrating security response is the missing link for CISOs to radically increase the effectiveness of their security programs.”
ServiceNow said CISOs are increasing the automation of security tasks to strengthen their response and remediation efforts.
Earlier this year, ServiceNow announced new integrations with cybersecurity firms and the ServiceNow Security Operations solution.
