Performance bottlenecks and lack of expertise have been major hurdles in the implementation of defensive measures around the world: survey
In a survey of 1,200 IT and security decision-makers in 10 countries (the US, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, France, Germany, China, India, Japan, and Australia) working for organizations with at least 1,000 employees, on their IT security approaches, network segmentation strategies and threats faced during 2023, the following trends were noted.
First, respondents had experienced an average of 86 ransomware attacks in the past 12 months, up from an average of 43 annual attacks in a similar survey two years ago. Some 99% of respondents in the region (defined here as those from China, India, Japan and Australia) reported that they had since deployed some form of segmentation and also a Zero Trust security framework.
Second, in terms of network segmentation, 36% of respondents from the region cited segmenting across more than two business critical areas, due to obstacles such as lack of skills/expertise(43%), compliance requirements (42%) and increased performance bottlenecks (40%).
Other findings
- 62% of respondents from the region were more likely to cite network segmentation as “extremely important” compared to those from the US (60%) or the EMEA region (53%).
- 36% of respondents is the region were “more likely to have segmented more than two business-critical assets” than those in the EMEA region (29%) and in the Americas (26%).
- 43% of respondents in the region, and 38% of those in EMEA, cited “lack of expertise” as their greatest segmentation obstacle. Respondents in the Americas (41%) cited increased performance bottlenecks as their greatest obstacle.
- 49% of respondents from the Americas were more likely to cited their Zero Trust deployment as being fully complete and defined, compared to those from the region (35%) and from EMEA (33%).
- 93% of all respondents cited network segmentation as critical for thwarting ransomware attacks, with respondents from India (58%) taking the lead in this practice, compared to those from Mexico (48%) and Japan (32%).
- Network downtime (52%), data loss (46%), and brand/reputation damage (45%) were the most common issues impacting respondents’ organizations after a ransomware attack.
According to Dean Houari, Director, Security Technology and Strategy (Asia-Pacific and Japan), Akamai Technologies, which conducted the survey: “Cybercriminals… are always shifting tactics and improving their tools to breach organizations. Whether it’s defending against ransomware, new zero-days, or sophisticated phishing attacks, it’s vital that organizations here re-evaluate their risks to protect their critical assets.”
