The blocking of aimed cyber-attacks and halting data leaks are among the major security challenges currently faced by businesses in the UK, according to a new survey carried out Check Point which included 320 UK IT professionals.
According to Check Point, about 33% of the survey respondents had focus on halting external cyber-attacks on their networks, which include hacking, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites, and malware.
About 26% of the respondents said that their main target was prevention of unintentional data losses by employees.
The survey revealed that 16% of respondents were enforcing security policies with employees, which 16% were ensuring loyalty to regulatory or compliance mandates and about 9% were reducing security complexity and costs.
When About 41% of the respondents said deterrence of external cyber-attacks which include hacking or DDoS attacks and malware infections was their main IT security issue which was followed by 34% saying that stopping data leaks or theft as a major IT issue.
12% of the surveyed cited securing remote access as their major issue, 5% of respondents revealed controlling staff use of web andsocial media resources as their main issue.
Check Point UK managing director Terry Greer-King said earlier this year, the company has found that UK companies were reporting an average of 68 new security attacks every week, and that successful incidents were costing around £150,000 each.
"As a result, companies are obviously concerned about mitigating their risk of exposure to external cyberattacks, such as hacking, denial of service, or malware, and focusing their security efforts on this," Terry said.
"It’s also interesting to see that IT professionals are increasingly acknowledging the role of employees in maintaining security, reducing the risks of targeted attacks such as spear-phishing and stopping inadvertent data leaks.
These issues need to be addressed by a combination of education and technology so that organisations can protect their data, their business and employees against the risks of security breaches."
Employee awareness of security policies and good security practice is taking an increasingly prominent role in maintaining network and data security.
About 29% of felt staff within their organisations had high awareness of their security policies, while 44% reported that security policy awareness was moderate, and about 27% revealed that staff had no awareness.
In the company’s survey regarding security awareness at different levels within the respondent’s firms, the surveyed reported that board-level executives were almost responsible for network or data security issue while clerical and administrative staff were responsible as 25% versus 26%.
About 18% of the surveyed rated that middle-management employees were a lower risk of causing an event, 15% were towards rating external consultants and partners as the lowest overall risk.
