Cisco: Almost Half of Organizations Lack Security Posture Confidence

According to Cisco’s 2016 Annual Security Report, only 45 percent of companies are confident in their cybersecurity measures. Anthony Stitt, Cisco’s security expert for Australia and New Zealand, explains that this lack of confidence is because today, attacks are more “sophisticated and bold with criminals launching more resilient campaigns.” Data breaches and cyberattacks using ransomware are happening more than ever and will continue to happen. What’s important is a company’s preparedness to quickly and efficiently deal with a cyber incident. Stitt claims that this “decline in confidence levels [in security posture] is because of ransomware and because organizations are seeing that it’s quite trivially easy for criminals to get into their environment and put malware on machines in the form of ransomware and then demand money from people.” To help combat this trend, Stitt claims that we must focus on information and data sharing, through mandatory disclosure laws. This would decrease response time and publicize what currently is happening beyond closed doors, allowing the public to understand these risks and combat them appropriately.