Identities Are The Highest Priority Risk Area

Uploaded on 2024-06-04 in TECHNOLOGY--Resilience, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

As the threat landscape continues to evolve in 2024and threat actors become increasingly more sophisticated, organisations are seeking ways to increase their security posture. Now, the leading data security firm Entrust and the Ponemon Institute have produced a new survey about approaches to identity management.

They asked over 4,000 IT and security professionals around the globe about their adoption of Zero Trust as a security practice, and the technologies they rely on to support their efforts to prevent cyberattacks.

The 2024 State of Zero Trust & Encryption Study surveyed 4,052 IT and IT security practitioners across the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and the Middle East.

The survey shows that people are now more motivated to invest in security to prevent data breaches, rather than just to follow regulations. While in the past, compliance was the main reason for security investments, 41% of respondents now prioritise security investments to reduce the risks of data breaches or other security incidents.

This marks a significant change in attitudes toward why organisations invest in security.

Key findings from the 2024 State of Zero Trust & Encryption Study include: 

Rising rates of cyber breaches are driving Zero Trust adoption: Two-thirds of organisations list cyber-risk concerns as the most important drivers for implementing a Zero Trust strategy.

The pattern is even more pronounced in the US, with 50% of organisations citing cyber breach risk and 29% reporting the expanding attack surface for a combined total of 79%

Senior leadership support for Zero Trust is increasing, but skills and budget aren’t keeping pace: Despite 60% of organisations reporting significant senior leadership support for Zero Trust, a lack of skills and budget continue to be cited as the biggest roadblocks to implementing these frameworks, highlighting a discrepancy between support and resource allocation.

Zero Trust adoption is exploding, but lagging in the West: While 62% of organisations have begun their own Zero Trust journey, only 48% of US organisations have, raising a concern that Western entities know they have a problem but are unable to adopt Zero Trust, leaving them vulnerable to cyber threats.

Good cyber hygiene alone can’t safeguard against all threats: 46% of respondents cited hackers exposing sensitive or confidential data as their top security concern, followed by system or process malfunctions and unmanaged certificates. For the first time in the past eight years, organisations did not rank employee mistakes as a top security threat.

People, skills, and ownership remain painful hurdles for CISOs to achieve effective credential management: 50% of respondents identified a shortage of skilled personnel, 47% highlighted the absence of clear ownership, and 46% pointed to inadequate staffing as the primary reasons for the challenges associated with credential management.

Image: Nick Fancher

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