Security pros worried about widening attack surface

A new report from Red Canary finds 87 percent of respondents have been impacted by a security incident they were unable to detect and neutralize in the past year, resulting in data compromise, outages, fines, audit failures and reputational damage.

Based on a study of 700 cybersecurity leaders it finds 73 percent say their attack surface has widened in the past two years, by an average of 77 percent, with 64 percent admitting to having knowledge deficits around securing new technologies.

Growing concerns include 62 percent saying AI has made it more difficult to keep their organizations secure, while all respondents have faced cloud security challenges. 77 percent say attackers are moving much faster but 85 percent admit the detection deficit (i.e. the time between detecting and resolving an incident) has either increased or stayed the same in the past year.

Tool bloat and alert fatigue is stopping teams from being proactive too. 60 percent say there is 'too much noise and too many security alerts' to deal with effectively. Security teams spend twice as much time on operational tasks as opposed to cyber readiness.

See also:

• Too many alerts lead security pros to worry they'll miss an attack
• Almost 90 percent of organizations suffered security incidents in the last three years
• What does cybersecurity tool sprawl look like today?

In addition, 83 percent say it's getting harder to recruit and retain skilled security professionals, while 62 percent are experiencing higher levels of churn due to overwork and stress.

"Expecting cybersecurity teams to understand every new risk has always been a challenge in the industry. Why would we expect that to change now, especially when the threat landscape is evolving faster than ever? It's simply unrealistic. The scale of risks facing the business today is unprecedented, and traditional security approaches are failing," says Brian Beyer, CEO and co-founder of Red Canary. "For too long, companies have tried to tackle this escalating problem by throwing more money, tools, and people at it. But with technology advancing at breakneck speed for both defenders and adversaries, cybersecurity teams are drowning, unable to keep up. It's time for a new approach -- one that involves strategic partnership and expert detection engineering to truly alleviate the burden and build defenses that actually work."

While 78 percent of security leaders believe that a more intelligence-led security program equipped with real-time insight would help them to focus on the most critical issues faster, 66 percent say it’s really difficult and time consuming to turn threat intelligence into actionable steps.

While 63 percent of security leaders saw a budget increase in the past year, only 37 percent feel it was enough to secure their business. This issue is compounded as 62 percent say that continued investment in developer speed is putting their business at risk.

"This survey found that nearly 80 percent of threats come from commonly used technologies, which is both astounding and so unnecessary," adds Beyer. "Protecting the entire enterprise is becoming more complex, and simultaneously, their budgets remain fixed with limited resources. Security teams have more data than ever, but they need help sorting through it to understand how attackers operate and improve their security. That's where a trusted partner can help."

The full report is available from the Red Canary site.

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