What Keeps Cybersecurity Professionals up at Night:

Cybersecurity professionals are facing an increasingly complex scenario in their daily jobs as the sheer volume of risks and vulnerabilities seem to multiply by the minute. The advancement of technology and the interconnectivity of systems have created an environment where cyber threats can proliferate at an unprecedented pace, and the current geopolitical tensions are accelerating that phenomenon. Approximately 25,000 vulnerabilities were disclosed in 2022, a 689% increase in less than 6 years. This creates large amounts of threat intelligence data needing to be analyzed and transformed into actionable insights. However most organizations are struggling as they lack the needed toolset to automatically handle such data and extract intelligence at scale, resulting in blind spots in their attack surface.

To shed light on the industry’s concerns, Armis polled IT professionals at some of this year’s major cybersecurity events – including Black Hat USA, RSA Conference and Infosecurity Europe, surveying over 140 industry professionals. The results gleaned valuable insights into what keeps cybersecurity professionals up at night:

Organizations worldwide are confronted with persistent threats, yet lack the necessary technology to efficiently manage and safeguard their attack surface.

With prevailing geopolitical tensions and economical instability, the risks of a material incident are escalating. Cybersecurity professionals perceive that financially motivated criminals pose the highest threat to their organization (55%), followed by state-sponsored hackers (38%). Attackers have both the motivation and the means to perpetrate these acts, and are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Fifteen percent of organizations admitted having been infected by malware in the past 18 months, and 6% suffered a ransomware attack. In the same period, 8% of organizations fell victim to a DDoS attack, 40% a phishing attack, 11% suffered a data breach and 5% admitted they experienced an IoT-based attack. Social engineering and scams facilitated by impersonation were also common occurrences.

In this turbulent landscape, nearly half of cybersecurity professionals we surveyed expressed doubt about the effectiveness of their current defenses. Only 52% of respondents reported confidence in their security toolset’s ability to adequately protect their expanded attack surface.

Inadequate data handling and analysis pose cybersecurity challenges, limiting organizations’ capabilities to manage their overall exposure to risk.

The research uncovered a significant obstacle in modern cybersecurity operations — a deficiency in effective data handling and analysis. With only 27% of respondents stating they had a single source of information for collating, analyzing, and prioritizing data, there is a clear need for streamlined processes. Over one-third (36%) of respondents admitted to manually ingesting and evaluating security-related data from multiple platforms, introducing the potential for human error. Additionally, 8% of professionals admitted to being overwhelmed by the data and having difficulty analyzing and prioritizing. The lack of efficient data handling and analysis is making it challenging for security teams to prioritize risks effectively as they face siloed information and long processes.

AI-powered solutions are the holy grail against an onslaught of risks.

Enter AI. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming the buzzword of the industry, with 28% of professionals at the events citing AI as their favorite current term, and for a good reason. AI-powered solutions promise to automate data ingestion, analysis, and prioritization, allowing cybersecurity teams to focus on what really matters. Additionally, there is a growing recognition that AI can also bridge the talent gap by automating workflows. Human resources are certainly a current challenge, as showcased by almost one-third (30%) of respondents who expressed that they struggle to fill cybersecurity positions.

Armis, the leading asset intelligence cybersecurity company, is committed to providing innovative solutions to these challenges. With Armis Centrix™, the cyber exposure management platform, powered by the Armis AI-driven Asset Intelligence Engine, we stand ready to revolutionize how organizations see, protect and manage their assets. Our seamless, frictionless, cloud-based platform proactively mitigates cyber asset risks, remediates vulnerabilities, blocks threats and ensures the security of the entire attack surface.

The future of cybersecurity hinges on a force multiplier and it’s time to invest in AI-driven solutions that empower cybersecurity teams, alleviates the talent shortage and ensures the protection of critical assets in an increasingly hostile landscape.  Armis invites organizations to explore its next generation AI-powered Armis Centrix™: https://www.armis.com/platform/armis-centrix/