Respondents cite lack of time, and being overwhelmed with threats and challenges.
Phishing is the most significant threat for IT leaders over the next two years, followed by ransomware.
Research of 250 UK public sector IT decision-makers - with direct cybersecurity responsibilities - by Trend Micro, found 31 percent of respondents acknowledging that a lack of proactive threat hunting and risk management leaves them exposed.
If breached, 24 percent admit it would take them between one to three days to successfully identify a ransomware attack, with the average response time being one day and six hours.
When delving into the why, the research highlights that they just don’t have enough time to focus on proactive cyber risk management. Almost half (49 percent) say they are so overwhelmed with managing immediate cybersecurity threats and challenges that they don’t have enough time to spend on building a strategic cyber plan.
Jonathan Lee, UK cybersecurity director at Trend Micro, said: “This underscores the urgent need to make cybersecurity a priority, with more investment in culture and technologies.
“As government systems evolve, often built on legacy infrastructure, they remain vulnerable, and no organisation can afford to treat cybersecurity as an afterthought. When 60 percent of IT decision-makers tell us that a successful cyber-attack is “only a matter of time”, the real question is no longer if an attack will happen, but how well-prepared we are when it does.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
