The Biggest Security Risks: Phishing, Ransomware, and Human Error

New research from software company Python STX Next explains how the world is getting used to the new normal as progress in the technology and IT industries are accelerating rapidly. In this regard, it is important to know the most important issues for CTOs. In case you don't know, CTO stands for Chief Technology Officer. It's usually responsible for the engineering team and is also in charge of implementing the technical strategy to improve the final product.

In this report, a survey of more than 500 CTOs from 4 continents was conducted in which they have shared knowledge about technology, current trends, security, and management. Research has revealed that CTOs view human error, ransomware, and phishing as the biggest security risks. If we want to have greater security, one of the things we need is to have stronger passwords.

The biggest security risks of companies

This worldwide study shows that 60% of CTOs see human error as the main security threat to their business, we must bear in mind that human beings are the weakest link in the chain, and it is useless to have many security measures if malware enters later due to human error. In addition, they believe that another of the biggest security risks that concern them the most are ransomware with 50% and phishing with 35%.

However, despite being aware of these dangers, only 26% say they have a dedicated cybersecurity team and only 50% have their cyber responsibilities outsourced. The good news is that the adoption of multi-factor authentication is strong and almost 90% of companies are using it in some form. On the other hand, on the negative side we find these aspects:

1. 50% have not implemented protection against ransomware, today protecting ourselves against this threat is very important.
2. 58% do not use security information and event management (SIEM), which is essential to correlate different events.
3. 41% do not use privileged access management (PAM).

Last conclusions

One positive thing to note is that 92% have implemented disaster recovery capabilities, such as automated backups.

Maciej Dziergwa, CEO of STX Next, says the survey found, although it has increased ransomware, the biggest concern of the safety of CTO remains the potential impact of human error. This is because many types of attacks depend on someone clicking a link or downloading a file to be successful. On the other hand, he added that companies that employ their own dedicated cyber team are still a minority and that although outsourcing is preferred, it is not a common policy either.

Also, Dziergwa says that strong disaster recovery planning shows that organizations are doing well and ensuring that the business is resilient in the face of unexpected disruptions. Finally, he says the next step would be for leaders to apply this approach to the more granular elements of cybersecurity, including anti-ransomware tools.