Cybersecurity teams are struggling with a lack of visibility into key security controls

89% of security professionals are most concerned about phishing, web and ransomware attacks. This is especially alarming, considering that only 48% confirm that they have continuous visibility into the risk area of phishing, web and ransomware, a Balbix report reveals.

Dealing with a lack of visibility

The findings also determined that 64% of organizations are only, at best, somewhat confident in their security posture, and that the lack of visibility into security is the primary concern for organizations. Specifically, 46% find it hard to tell which vulnerabilities are real threats vs ones that will never be exploited.

Limited visibility of the overall attack surface (37%), and the burden of being inundated with far too many alerts to act upon (25%) were found as additional significant concerns.

“The findings of our report make it abundantly clear that security professionals remain inundated with the challenge of maintaining comprehensive visibility over their complex attack surface while also combatting the evolving threat landscape,” said Vinay Sridhara, CTO of Balbix.

“In cybersecurity, risk trends can change overnight and it clear from the survey results that infosec professionals are struggling to assess, quantify, and prioritize the most important risks to their organizations.”

Additional findings

• The second biggest security threat faced by organizations, after phishing web and ransomware attacks, is unpatched systems (53%); misconfigurations (47%) follows as the third main risk driver
• 68% list unpatched systems as the top area that they have continuous visibility into, followed by identity and access management (59%) and phishing, web and ransomware (48%)
• Only 13% of cybersecurity leaders feel like presentations to the board go very well and that the board understands the cyber risk posture of the enterprise
• 60% of organizations have knowledge of fewer than 75% of the assets on their networks, with most claiming only spotty understanding of business criticality and categorization
• 80% of organizations provide more access privileges than are necessary for users to do their jobs, unnecessarily adding substantial risk to their organizations
• Only 58% are capable of determining all vulnerable assets within 24 hours following news of critical exploits

Enterprises must realize that understanding cyber risk across their attack surface is no longer a human scale problem. To solve this challenge, enterprises must start with gaining continuous, comprehensive visibility of real risks to their organization, including not only where they have weaknesses or vulnerabilities, but also whether those weaknesses are likely to impact them. From there, prioritizing fixes for the riskiest issues will ensure maximum breach reduction and the most efficient security team possible.