A staggering number of internal IT teams still don’t know if their company is subject to data privacy regulations, according to a study from cybersec company, Acronis.
6% of companies in Brazil are unsure if such regulations apply to them, Canada and USA — 14% and 13% respectively. Yet, an overwhelming majority of local companies claim they have a method in place to identify when data is unexpectedly accessed or modified.
Organizations in Brazil show the most confidence: 88% of local companies claim to have such a method in place — compared to the global average of 81%. Fourth highest rate across the world, following India (93%), UAE (90%), and South Africa (89%). Organizations in US and Canada are less certain they’re able to determine if their data has been tampered with — at 75% and 71% respectively, they fall slightly behind the global average.
Cybercriminals are hiding behind complexity
Only 24% of organizations across Americas didn’t suffer from downtime over the past year. Roughly one-third of organizations in Brazil (34%), Canada (38%) and USA (32%) have experienced downtime due to a cyberattack in the past year. Human error led to downtime for 44% of organizations in the US. Brazil (34%) and Canada (36%), on the other hand, ranked below the global average of 42% in this category. One of the likely reasons for this high rate of downtime is IT infrastructure complexity — too many solutions are getting piled up and misused. While IT security budgets go up, efficiency goes down — leading to more gaps being exposed in existing cyber defenses.
Rising cyberthreats are breeding more fear
When asked if they are concerned with increased politically-motivated cyberattacks, 84% of users in Brazil, 75% in Canada and 69% in USA responded that they were either very or moderately concerned — with roughly one-third of IT users in Brazil (34%) and USA (28%) being “very concerned”.
Cyberthreats IT users in Americas are most worried about:
• Data theft (credit card, identity, passwords, etc.) — 66%
• Malware (virus, etc.) attacks — 61%
• Phishing attacks — 48%
That may explain why 63% of IT users in Americas felt the need for even more precautions to protect data, devices and privacy in the last year. For enterprise and enterprise startups, Miami will host Acronis’ next Cyberfit Summit.
