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New Osterman Survey on the Phishing Prevention Perception Gap Reveals Disconnect Between C-Suite and Cybersecurity Professionals
Sponsored by IRONSCALES, study reveals that while phishing is a major concern for all organizations, decision makers are four times more likely than security practitioners to consider email security the highest priority.
March 10, 2020
4 Min Read
PRESS RELEASE
TEL AVIV & ATLANTA – MARCH 10, 2020 - IRONSCALES, the pioneer of self-learning email security, today announced the results of a new survey of cybersecurity professionals conducted in partnership with Osterman Research, a leading security market research firm. “The Phishing Prevention Perception Gap: Robust Email Security Requires Alignment Between Security Practitioners and Decision Makers” is based on a detailed, cross-industry survey of 252 security professionals from the United States and the United Kingdom and found that a serious disconnect exists between how decision makers (i.e., CISOs, CIOs and CEOs), and security practitioners (i.e., IT managers and directors, security architects and security operations analysts) perceive phishing prevention.
Among its key findings, the survey revealed that decision makers are four times more likely than security practitioners to consider email security the highest priority, suggesting that security personnel believe that they have a sufficient handle on phishing prevention while the C-Suite sees substantial business risk. The complete survey results have been compiled into a 20-page report which can be downloaded for free at https://get.ironscales.com/rs/954-HBD-655/images/osterman_research_white_paper.pdf.
“The disconnect between security practitioners and decision makers is extraordinarily problematic for phishing prevention and incident response,” said Eyal Benishti, IRONSCALES founder and CEO. “The cause for such a predicament - whether or not security professionals on the front lines don’t fully understand the long-term business impact of a successful phishing attack or if the C-Suite is simply over-concerned - is irrelevant. What matters is that moving forward these two important constituencies get on the same page so that the proper time and attention can be allocated towards minimizing phishing risk.”
Conducted over four weeks between late December 2019 and early January 2020, the survey was designed to determine whether or not current email security and anti-phishing technologies, practices and processes are adequate enough for mid-sized businesses and enterprises to truly reduce email phishing risk. Overall, the survey revealed that there is a critical need for real-time threat intelligence to more thoroughly address the risk of phishing; that the security skills shortage is having a material impact on security teams’ ability to deal with phishing properly, and that most organizations are using several tools to combat phishing, with secure email gateways remaining the most common.
Other key findings from the survey include:
24% of a 40-hour work week is spent by security analysts investigating, detecting or remediating phishing emails
Only One in five organizations continuously updates and tweaks its corporate email security policies in a typical month
Nearly three in five organizations train their users on proper email security protocols no more than twice per year, while only a third of organizations do so much more frequently (at least monthly or continuously).
More than 70% of organizations use only manual processes for reviewing user-reported phishing emails, making it far too labor and time-intensive to mitigate email threats at scale.
The survey also found that phishing emails continue to take organizations a substantial amount of time to detect, investigate and remediate. In total:
70% of organizations take more than 5 minutes to remove a phishing attack from a corporate mailbox even though the average time-to-click is 82 seconds.
75% of organizations cannot act on phishing intelligence automatically in real-time.
90% of organizations cannot orchestrate phishing intelligence from multiple sources in real time in the context of their overall email security solution(s).
“The survey’s findings reinforce the significant challenges that email phishing attacks incur on organizations of all sizes,” said Michael Osterman, principal analyst at Osterman Research. “Most immediately, decision makers and cybersecurity practitioners must work to overcome the disconnect that exists so that time, budget and resources can be properly allocated to reduce email phishing risk.”
For more information on how IRONSCALES helps reduce email phishing risk, visit www.ironscales.com and follow @ironscales on social media.
About IRONSCALES
IRONSCALES is the future of phishing protection, incubated inside the world’s top venture program for cybersecurity and founded by alumni of the Israeli Defense Forces’ elite Intelligence Technology unit. We offer security professionals and end users an AI-driven, self-learning email security platform that provides a comprehensive solution to stop tomorrow’s phishing attacks today. Using the world’s most decentralized threat protection network, our platform accelerates the prevention, detection and remediation of phishing attacks already inside your email with threat removal times in seconds, not minutes or hours. We give organizations of all sizes complete anti-phishing protection against any type of phishing attack, right now. Visit www.ironscales.com to learn more about The Power of Now.
About Osterman Research
Osterman Research provides timely and accurate market research, cost data and benchmarking information to technology-based companies. They do this by continually gathering information from IT decision-makers and end-users of information technology. They report and analyze information to help companies develop and improve the products and services they offer to different markets or to internal customers. Learn more at www.ostermanresearch.com.
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