Mary-Louise Hoffman
A report from CounterTack|MCSI has shown that 49 percent of 639 U.S. information technology professionals surveyed by the Ponemon Institute have adopted a “wait-and-see” stance on enterprise cyber defense.
Nearly 30 percent of respondents said they consider nation-state attacks as a form of cyber warfare, CounterTack | MCSI said Wednesday.
The security firm observed state-sponsored hackers targeting personal identifiable information, schematic drawings and classified military intelligence.
“State-sponsored actors are a major threat to organizational infrastructure, yet many organizations are not being proactive enough to beef up their network defenses until it is often times too late,” said Michael Davis, chief technology officer of CounterTack.
Seventy-five percent of organizations that participated in the study are unequipped to recognize or avoid a nation-state attack and 74 percent of C-level executives worry that such an attack could happen to their companies, the report noted.
The study also found 35 percent of IT security practitioner respondents believe their organizations have been a victim of state-sponsored hacking.
“Providing additional education to organizations on the characteristics of nation-state attacks, and intent of the malicious actors, is necessary to better equip security personnel in lowering their level of risk,” said Larry Ponemon, president of the Ponemon Institute.
