Cyberthreats and loss of revenue rise as employees work from home, even as furloughs and job redundancy threaten to shrink the security workforce
Exabeam, the Smarter SIEM™ company, today released new research that identified initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on security teams. The report suggests increases in both cyber and financial risks since the onset of the health crisis in the first half of 2020. During this time, 80 percent of companies saw ‘slightly to considerably more’ cyberattack attempts, breaking down to 88 percent in the U.S. and 74 percent in the U.K.
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The newest research from Exabeam suggests increases in both cyber and financial risks since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020.
In total, one-third of respondents experienced a successful cyberattack during COVID-19, leading to network downtime for 40 percent of U.K. companies and 38 percent of U.S. companies.
The research, commissioned by Exabeam and conducted in the U.K. and the U.S. by Censuswide, included more than 1,000 IT security professionals at small- to medium-sized enterprises, half in a chief information security officer (CISO) or security operations center (SOC) leadership role, and half in a security engineer/analyst or security architect position.
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Of the total respondents, the majority reported that companies deferred all security hiring during March through June 2020, with significantly higher deferrals in the U.S. (70 percent) versus the U.K. (42 percent). On top of hiring freezes, 75 percent of overall companies experienced security team furloughs, and 68 percent laid off team members. By region, 36 percent of U.K. and 29 percent of U.S. companies reported that two security team members had been furloughed. Nearly 29 percent of U.S. teams lost one to redundancy, and 33 percent of U.K. teams lost two.
Despite the team reductions, just 22 percent of the total respondents listed staff shortages as the biggest challenge in mitigating threats while working remotely. This issue was eclipsed by communication with security teams in the U.K. (33 percent), and communication with other IT functions in the U.S. (40 percent). Strained interactions between IT and security teams is common but even more difficult to manage remotely. Combined with fewer hands during cyberattack investigation, this can impact overall mitigation efforts when remote. Network security issues were also prominent, with 29 percent of all respondents citing difficulty investigating attacks, and 27 percent naming lack of insight into individual networks as some of their major struggles.
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