Firms unprepared and indifferent to cyber war, report says

Russia has been waging war in Ukraine for nearly a year now. Although it has long spread to the cyber realm, many organizations still underestimate cyber warfare’s gravity.

A survey of over 6,000 IT and security professionals across multiple industries by Armis indicates that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a greater threat of cyber warfare.

“Cyber warfare is the future of terrorism on steroids, providing a cost-effective and asymmetric method of attack, which requires constant vigilance and expenditure to defend against,” said Nadir Izrael, Co-founder of the security firm.

According to the survey, one-third of organizations are indifferent or unconcerned about the impact of cyber warfare, and nearly one-quarter feel underprepared to handle it.

The war, according to Izrael, is causing “geopolitical shockwaves of cyberwarfare that will reverberate for the foreseeable future.”

“Clandestine cyber warfare is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We now see brazen cyberattacks by nation-states, often with the intent to gather intelligence, disrupt operations, or outright destroy data. Based on these trends, all organizations should consider themselves possible targets for cyberwarfare attacks and secure their assets accordingly.”

Over half of the respondents, who are responsible for IT security, said they have experienced more threat activity on their network in the past six months.

IT professionals also agree with a statement that their organizations have stalled or even stopped digital transformation projects due to the threat of cyber warfare, especially in countries like Australia, the US, Singapore, the UK, and Denmark.

Regarding ransomware policy, one-quarter of respondents indicated they always pay, nearly one-third said their organization only pays when customer data is at risk, and one-quarter claimed they never pay.

Over three-quarters of IT professionals claimed the organization’s culture is changing in response to cyber war. Many of them believe their companies will invest more in cybersecurity.

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