66 per cent of CIOs in UAE face pressure to effectively prevent, detect and quickly respond to costly cyber-attacks, says Carbon Black

UAE, May 4, 2016- About 66 per cent of CIOs in the UAE are facing mounting pressure to implement cutting-edge solutions designed to successfully prevent, detect and quickly respond to harmful cyber-attacks, the latest survey conducted by Carbon Black, the leading provider of next-generation endpoint security solutions, showed. Carbon Black released the results to underscore the significance of swiftly addressing online security breaches after 71 per cent of those surveyed revealed that it takes them one to two weeks to uncover costly intrusions to their networks. 

Alarmingly, according to the survey, 29 per cent of CIOs are still not worried about the slow response despite the fact that attackers can steal large volumes of confidential corporate data and cause greater costs and reputational damage the longer breaches remain undetected. Furthermore, three out of four respondents tend to be more reactive rather than proactive to online threats, leading to failure to effectively stop the damaging online security incidents from occurring again. 

The survey also revealed that many organizations remain vulnerable on their endpoints, as a majority of the respondents still overlook next-generation endpoint security (NGES) to protect their devices. About 83 per cent of them said that their primary security tool is a firewall, while only 3 per cent opt to deploy advanced endpoint protection that goes beyond anti-virus software. This means that attackers can still easily infiltrate the organization’s vital information by hacking endpoint devices through human interaction. Many hackers use social engineering, a tool that relies heavily on human interaction, to gain access to secure data.

Additionally, 78 per cent of the respondents are completely confident in knowing what systems and data would be affected if they were to suffer a breach. Overall, 80.5 per cent of the respondents agree that security vendors need to collaborate more to provide their customers with contextual information about the threats they see. This further bolsters Carbon Black’s advocacy for security vendors to unite to ward off cyber threats. 

Ben Johnson, Chief Security Strategist, Carbon Black, said: “It has never been an effective strategy to wait for hackers to make a mistake and expose themselves before your network security team acts on it. Just like the attackers, an organization’s team must be equally, if not more, determined, sophisticated, and well-funded. We know for a fact that many security teams are still unable to prioritize threats because of the huge volume of alerts they receive. Companies need to automate processes where possible to enable their security teams to counter threats and paralyze hackers during an attack, rather than just picking up the pieces in the aftermath of the attack.”
 
Carbon Black conducted the survey to analyze the approach of CIOs in the UAE in protecting their company’s private data.