By Jeff Schmidt, BT Executive Global Head of Business Continuity, Security and Governance, BT Global Services
IT managers from different sectors appear split over attitudes to cyber-security, according to research commissioned by BT.
Whilst over 80 per cent of those working in the financial services sector described cyber-security as “a major concern”, this belief was echoed by just 60 per cent of managers in the logistics sector.
Confidence in managing the threat also varies according to sector. Nearly half of IT managers in the pharmaceutical industry expressed concern over their ability to combat the problem, whereas in the financial services sector, just over a third of IT managers expressed similar anxiety. Half of respondents in this sector claimed that they were actively strengthening protection, making significant investments in technology and resources to minimise the risk of disruption.
Is this, however, a reflection of wider differences between industries? Or, is it merely that some businesses have not yet realised the threat posed by cyber-crime?
The discrepancy is less surprising when we consider that just a third of respondents in the financial services sector have actually experienced a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) related breach — a figure which rises to 45 per cent in the pharmaceutical and FMCG industries where respondents acknowledged higher levels of BYOD breach experiences.
There is clear agreement across sectors that BYOD has increased complexity of the security infrastructure. Similarly, emerging threats — such as employees leaking data or employees using personally owned devices — consistently ranked alongside established cyber-security challenges, such as cyber-terrorism and cybercrime.
Regardless of sector, it’s clear that these emerging threats have changed the landscape of the traditional perimeter dramatically. In order to meet these challenges head-on, enterprises need to have: a clear policy; a combination of the right tools to implement it; the trust with which to deliver it to employees; and processes in the business that everyone understands and buys into.
IT security has always been about a blend of people, policy, process and technology, and the right blend is even more critical in a world defined by employee-owned devices, clouds, and extranets. However, rather than being perceived as a barrier to agility or flexibility, security can and should act as an enabler to improve an organisation’s ability to adapt to these trends.
It’s crucial that organisations ensure they remain flexible enough to successfully exploit innovation, increase productivity, and to create a better working environment for all employees.
By Jeff Schmidt, BT Executive Global Head of Business Continuity, Security and Governance, BT Global Services
