Industry & Business

Logicalis Ireland, the IT solutions and managed services provider, has announced the results of a survey which shows that malicious insiders are the fastest-growing threat to businesses, according to CIOs. The research was conducted in October and involved 840 IT leaders from Ireland and across the globe.

Thirty-nine per cent of CIOs said that malicious insiders are a main concern for their organisations. Lack of staff awareness and resulting mistakes were cited by 56% of respondents, highlighting that the human dimension of cyber risk is more of a focus than ever before. Malware and ransomware (68%), data breaches (54%) and phishing (49%) also ranked highly as top security risks.

As a result of such concerns, 93% of CIOs are now devoting up to half their time on information security. In fact, more than half spend at least 30% of their time on this area. This is also reflected in how CIOs are measured with 73% measured on system availability and 60% admitting that risk mitigation is a key performance indicator.

There has also been a shift in terms of how IT leaders view their organisation’s approach to security. Over a third agree that a policy of cyber resilience is needed, as opposed to a purely defensive strategy. In addition, 10% of respondents revealed they are currently reassessing their security footing.

It seems that security has been overlooked somewhat with 28% of CIOs not knowing what security standard they adhere to – 14% adhere to no standard at all – and 10% unaware of which security technologies make up their frameworks. Again, the human element is identified as a point of weakness with 42% not carrying out user awareness training for staff.

Ross O’Donovan (pictured), Information Security Practice Lead with Logicalis Ireland, said: “Over the last few years, there have been major developments in terms of new capabilities, services and expertise in IT. With this progression comes new risks and threats, so security has never been more important for organisations.

“In particular, CIOs are focusing on internal threats as they realise that a tech-based defence is not enough with people often the weakest link in the company defence strategy. Human error and malicious insiders pose a major threat to organisations. If companies don’t address these, it could be extremely costly for them and their customers.

“As well as an advanced next generation firewall, businesses need to implement a human firewall in terms of their employees. At Logicalis Ireland, we understand that that while every organisation is different our standards based approach of focusing on your people, processes & technologies will ensure they are highly resilient to risk – both external and internal – through managed security solutions that offer proactive defence, detection and recovery.”