IT and Security: Study on Information Security in Corporate Sector

Kaspersky Lab has released the results of its study entitled “Cyber Threats and Information Security in Corporate Sector: Trends in the World and in Russia”.

The study reads that last year 9 out of 10 companies at least once encountered cyber threats. In Russia 96% of respondents stated this against 91% in the world. For every third organization in the world (every second one in Russia) these incidents resulted into data loss, crucial data for business included. At the same time almost a half of all respondents (46%) suppose that the number of cyber threats is growing, and only 8% claim on an insignificant decrease. Threats encountered by the companies — are viruses, worms and malware software, spam, phishing and hackers’ attacks.

For the first time Kaspersky Lab has conducted such a global research on a threshold of the launch of new corporate solutions. The study shows that functions and technologies implemented in new Kaspersky Endpoint Security 8 will contribute to effective dealing with information security problems – an everyday concern of IT-managers, says Sergei Zemkov, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab in Russia. — The whole complex of measures for the launch of new solutions – surveys and introduction of specific protection mechanisms – enables “protection in advance” – an opportunity to resist not only existing cyber threats but also the cyber threats of tomorrow”.

Most popular measures to provide information security are the use of anti-virus software and firewalls, updates (including those eliminating software vulnerabilities) and backup data copies. More than a half of respondents (in Russia — 60%, in the world — 59%) are convinced that corporate networks of their organizations are well-protected. Nevertheless the results of the study show that all the above-mentioned types of protection are employed only in 21% of Russian companies (in the world — 36%), while 1% of organizations (3% in the world) have no anti-cyber threat protection at all.

Many organizations consider that new technologies may pose certain risks for information security. Thus, 29% of representatives of Russian companies (23% in the world) consider cloud technologies as a threat, 44% (42%) of enterprises are reluctant to introduce innovations at all.

Among the main threats of the future as expected by IT-specialists are target and hackers’ attacks, as well as malware software. Meanwhile the respondents foresee that the problem of cyber threats will become more pressing for business — today cyber threats comes as a central risk for 14% of Russian organizations (15% in the world), 44% (46%) of respondents predict that cyber threats will pose the main business risk in two years.