80% of Global Organizations Expect to Experience a Breach of Customer Records in the Next Year

Trend Micro Cyber Risk Index shows organizations are at an elevated risk of attack

HONG KONG
SAR – Media
OutReach – 4 August 2021 –  (;), a global cybersecurity leader, today revealed
that the risk of cyber attacks has increased in the last year. According to a
new survey, 80% of global organizations report they are likely to experience a
data breach that impacts customer data in the next 12 months.

Read
the full report, produced by the Ponemon Institute, here: https://www.trendmicro.com/cyberrisk.

The
CRI is based on a numerical scale of -10 to 10, with -10 representing the
highest level of risk. The current global index stands at -0.42, a slight
increase on last year which indicates an “elevated” risk.

“Once
again we’ve found plenty to keep CISOs awake at night, from operational and
infrastructure risks to data protection, threat activity and human-shaped
challenges,” said Tony Lee, Head of Consulting, Hong Kong and Macau,
of Trend Micro. “To lower cyber risk, organizations must be better
prepared by going back to basics, identifying the critical data most at risk,
focusing on the threats that matter most to their business, and delivering
multi-layered protection from comprehensive, connected platforms.”

Organizations
ranked the top three negative consequences of an attack as customer churn, lost
IP and critical infrastructure damage/disruption.

Key
findings from the report include:

• 86% said it was somewhat to very
  likely that they’d suffer serious cyber-attacks in the next 12 months, compared
  to 83% last time
• 24% suffered 7+ cyber attacks that
  infiltrated networks/systems, versus 23% in the previous report.
• 21% had 7+ breaches of information
  assets, versus 19% in the previous report.
• 20% of respondents said they’d
  suffered 7+ breaches of customer data over the past year, up from 17% in the
  last report.

“Trend
Micro’s CRI continues to be a helpful tool to help companies better understand
their cyber risk,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon,
CEO for the Ponemon Institute. “Businesses globally can use this resource
to prioritize their security strategy and focus their resources to best manage
their cyber risk. This type of resource is increasingly useful as harmful
security incidents continue to be a challenge for businesses of all sizes and
industries.”

Among
the top two infrastructure risks was cloud computing. Global organizations gave
it a  6.77, ranking it as an elevated risk on the index’s 10-point scale.
Many respondents admitted they spend “considerable resources”
managing third party risks like cloud providers.

The
top cyber risks highlighted in the report were as follows:

• Man-in-the-middle attacks
• Ransomware
• Phishing and social engineering
• Fileless attack
• Botnets

The
top security risks to infrastructure remain the same as last year, and include
organizational misalignment and complexity, as well as cloud computing
infrastructure and providers. In addition, respondents identified customer
turnover, lost intellectual property and disruption or damages to critical
infrastructure as key operational risks for organizations globally.

The
main challenges for cybersecurity preparedness include limitations for security
leaders who lack the authority and resources to achieve a strong security
posture, as well as organizations struggling to enable security technologies
that are sufficient to protect their data assets and IT infrastructure.