Cybersecurity professionals are concerned that they are being targeted by various state-sponsored hackers.
Nearly two-thirds of information security professionals believe that cyberspace is a threat to organization as state-sponsored cyberattacks become more common and larger in scale – and concerns are even greater among chief information security officers, with nearly three-quarters considering cyberspace a threat to their organizations.
However, there is still a significant percentage that does not believe that cyberspace is a threat to their businesses, and over a quarter of companies have no strategy on how to protect themselves from cyberattacks carried out using tools developed by various states.
The attitudes of thousands of cybersecurity professionals have been analyzed in Bitdefender, which outlines what the security industry thinks about the challenges facing businesses – and a significant number of professionals believe that cyberwarfare is an imminent threat.
Security professionals surveyed in the survey said the consequences of an attack launched as part of a cyber campaign could be loss of information, loss of reputation, business disruptions and job losses.
And in the majority of cases, it is likely that organizations that fall victim to cyberattacks are collateral damage of attacks carried out by various states.
For example, NotPetya shut down networks around the world after causing billions of dollars in damage and is in an attack that likely originated in Russia and spiraled out of control. The intended target was in Ukraine, but the nature of the internet caused damage far beyond what was anticipated.
But while many organizations understand the potential risks of being embroiled in a cyber campaign controversy, some executives don't see it as a problem or don't have a plan for how to deal with it.
“The reason a quarter of professionals don’t really have a strategy for cybersecurity is because of complacency. They’ve never had to deal with an attack, so they haven’t invested in protection,” said Liviu Arsene, global cybersecurity researcher at Bitdefender.
"They probably think they are too young to be targeted or they haven't had an event they need to recover from," he added.
However, incidents like NotPetya, the WannaCry , and others have shown that organizations of all sizes can fall victim to a government-sponsored attack that has been deployed nationwide.
