Cyber terrorism seen as biggest single future threat

47% of UK IT decision makers (ITDMs) are more worried about cyber terrorism attacks now than they were 12 months ago, according to IP EXPO Europe. This was identified as the biggest cyber security risk in the future (27%), followed by attacks to national infrastructure (13%).

In light of this newly perceived risk, more traditional cyber threats such as ransomware and DDoS are rated as a lower risk, with only 11%, 10% and 9% of ITDMs respectively noting these threats as the biggest risk. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has led to an overwhelming 94% of respondents demanding that the UK Government spend more on national cyber security.

Unsurprisingly, 43% identified cyber security as one of the main technology themes for enterprises in 2017, with 89% of respondents admitting worry about being the victim of a security breach. However, almost a third (29%) are even more worried than they were 12 months ago, indicating concern over rising threat levels.

In addition, the research revealed concern over the rising threat level. Not only have 52% of ITDMs had to deal with at least one cyber attack on their organisation in the last 12 months, 67% think that the threat level has increased in the last year. In fact, 32% would rate the current threat level as 21 to 30% higher than previously. Technology developments in areas such as artificial intelligence (22%) and cloud (49%) are identified as increasing exposure to cyber security threats.

Not only are UK ITDMs dealing with increased threat levels, many also claim they are continuing to face resourcing and skills issues. 29% are more worried about having enough resources to keep their business safe from cyber threats than they were 12 months ago, whilst 27% think that cyber security skills are going to be the most in-demand STEM skills in the future.

In light of these results, it is unsurprising that 16% expect to spend over 50% of their IT budget on cyber security and 25% will spend 11 to 30%. Conversely, an astonishing 18% saying they don’t expect to allocate any budget to cyber security solutions in the next 12 months.

“In today’s connected world, cyber security impacts everyone. Every time you connect to any kind of tech infrastructure you face potential threats – this doesn’t mean we should be paranoid about security, but the fact remains that threats are increasing. The old approaches of relying on perimeter defense and rule-based security are now inadequate, especially as organisations move to the cloud. In the near future virtual intelligence will play an important role in combatting cyber security. Imagine an enterprise whose infrastructure is under cyber attack, it’s easy to see how an automated business workflow could be triggered as the attack is detected, enabling the system to take the necessary action to either redirect, isolate, quarantine, or even stop the attack – and notify a government security agency to also take action,” said Jean Turgeon, head of networking, Avaya.