Half of organisations unprepared for cyber attacks, report finds

A new report has found a shocking number of businesses around the world feel they are unprepared to deal with threats including cyber attacks and data breaches.

The FireEye Cyber Trendscape Report 2020 surveyed more than 800 senior-level executives in North America, Europe and Asia and discovered only 49 per cent were confident their company could deal with a major information security incident.

This varied region-by-region, with 72 per cent of respondents in the US claiming they are fully prepared compared to just 25 per cent in Japan.

Meanwhile, 29 per cent of organisations that did have cyber attack response plans in place admitted they had not tested them for a year, while only a quarter rated their cyber security training initiatives as 'advanced'.

However, it looks as though some may be eager to change their ways, as the report also found 76 per cent of firms plan to increase their budget for cyber security next year.

Back in September, Proofpoint's Annual Human Factor Report discovered that 99 per cent of fruitful email-based cyber attacks rely on people opening malicious links or files and therefore require some level of human input to execute.