Less than half (48 per cent) of organisations feel confident in their understanding of the cybersecurity threats surrounding their business, according to the latest study by Rackspace Technology.
The report also noted that only three in five (59 per cent) Middle East businesses feel confident in their ability to respond to incidents today.
It also revealed that constantly evolving security threats and attack methods, as well as increasing attack opportunities as data volumes, digital operations and remote work continue to grow as the greatest cybersecurity challenges faced by more than half (55 per cent) of the Middle East’s IT leaders.
In the face of this threat landscape, further concern is raised by the finding that nearly half (44 per cent) of IT decision makers don’t have the capability today to identify security incidents across multi-cloud environments. When it comes to mitigating threats, only 49 per cent of those surveyed feel confident in addressing them today, and only half feel assured in addressing regulatory compliance.
In relation to data, about half (56 per cent) are currently confident in their ability to protect critical data and warehouses. And when it comes to assessing cybersecurity capabilities and needs on a periodic basis, only two in five (45 per cent) felt comfortable in this area.
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The Rackspace study also noted that more than half (64 per cent) of companies are finding it hard to retain and recruit cybersecurity talent, though a similar proportion (61 per cent) are confident in their internal initiatives in terms of cybersecurity talent retention.
The cybersecurity skills touted as the most important were cloud security (52 per cent) and risk management (50 per cent). Despite its importance, a third (37 per cent) of companies feel the biggest cybersecurity skills gap is in relation to cloud security.
In the face of staffing and skills concerns, more than half of Middle East businesses (62 per cent) rely on in-house staff with some external third-party help. A third (34 per cent) said they use at least six to ten external partners to provide cybersecurity.
When looking into the types of cybersecurity partners the businesses engage with, the most sought-after are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) (48 per cent) and System Integrators (45 per cent). The top three areas of cybersecurity most likely to be handled by external partners are around integrated risk (52 per cent), network security (45 per cent) and data security (41 per cent).
When asked to report their companies’ overall level of maturity in cloud security, 34 per cent said they were at an intermediate level, having to rely on third-party tools built for cloud security. An additional 27 per cent described themselves as cloud-centric, meaning they use native tooling mixed with third-party tooling.
