Balbix Inc. released its 2020 Cybersecurity 360 Report. The report assesses the state of the enterprise cybersecurity posture in the wake of COVID-19 when the majority of organizations have rapidly adjusted to remote work policies and escalating threats. The findings identify the perennial challenges and primary risk drivers that security professionals are currently facing.

The report found that 89 percent of security professionals are most concerned about phishing, web and ransomware attacks. This is especially alarming, says Balbix, considering that only 48 percent confirm that they have continuous visibility into the risk area of phishing, web and ransomware. The findings also determined that 64 percent of organizations are only, at best, somewhat confident in their security posture, and that the lack of visibility into security is the primary concern for organizations. Specifically, 46 percent find it hard to tell which vulnerabilities are real threats vs. ones that will never be exploited. Limited visibility of the overall attack surface (37 percent), and the burden of being inundated with far too many alerts to act upon (25 percent) were found as additional significant concerns.

"The findings of our report make it abundantly clear that security professionals remain inundated with the challenge of maintaining comprehensive visibility over their complex attack surface while also combatting the evolving threat landscape," said Vinay Sridhara, CTO of Balbix. “In cybersecurity, risk trends can change overnight and it clear from the survey results that infosec professionals are struggling to assess, quantify, and prioritize the most important risks to their organizations.”

Additional findings of the report include:

  • The second biggest security threat faced by organizations, after phishing web and ransomware attacks, is unpatched systems (53 percent); Misconfigurations (47 percent) follows as the third main risk driver.
  • The majority (68 percent) list unpatched systems as the top area that they have continuous visibility into, followed by identity and access management (59 percent) and phishing, web and ransomware (48 percent).
  • Only 13 percent of cybersecurity leaders feel like presentations to the board go very well and that the board understands the cyber risk posture of the enterprise.
  • 60 percent of organizations have knowledge of fewer than 75 percent of the assets on their networks, with most claiming only spotty understanding of business criticality and categorization.
  • 80 percent of organizations provide more access privileges than are necessary for users to do their jobs, unnecessarily adding substantial risk to their organizations.
  • Only 58 percent are capable of determining all vulnerable assets within 24 hours following news of critical exploits.

"Enterprises must realize that understanding cyber risk across their attack surface is no longer a human scale problem. To solve this challenge, enterprises must start with gaining continuous, comprehensive visibility of real risks to their organization, including not only where they have weaknesses or vulnerabilities, but also whether those weaknesses are likely to impact them. From there, prioritizing fixes for the riskiest issues will ensure maximum breach reduction and the most efficient security team possible," says the report. 

This report is based on the results of a comprehensive online survey of IT and cybersecurity professionals in the US, conducted in May 2020 to identify the latest trends and concerns in the cybersecurity community. The respondents range from technical executives to IT security practitioners, representing a balanced cross-section of organizations of varying sizes across multiple industries.