Approximately 90% of agencies struck by a data breach

Hackers sustain to gain the upper hand in the war for data breach, with an astounding 87% of agencies saying they were the victims of cyberattacks in the past twelve months.

That is one of the findings in the new research “Threats Below the Surface Report,” which surveyed more than 3,000 Information Technology (IT) experts on the security risks, priorities and capabilities that are top-of-mind. The research also discovered that one in three agencies reported that they had been hacked more than 5 times in the last 12 months, double the rate of 2014.

One of the leading causes of the rise in data breach risks is the rapid adoption of cloud computing, the study demonstrates.

“Enterprise cloud apps lack critical controls for data security that could primarily decrease the threat of a breach,” stated Nat Kausik, chief executive officer at Bitglass, which co-produced the study along with the CyberEdge Group and Information Security Community. “While few agencies can recognize potential leaks after the fact, some organizations can remediate threats in real time.”

Kausik shared several dramatic statistics regarding data breaches and cyber preparedness:

• 54% of organizations hit with a ransonware attack were capable to recover without paying up.


• 52% of organizations hope to increase their overall information security budgets.


• 39% of agencies in retail and 36% in technology are spending a larger portion of their budgets on information security than in other vertical markets.


• 37% said phishing is a top security concern, followed by insider threats (cited by 33%) and malware (32%)


• 36% of agencies monitor mobile devices


• 24% of organizations monitor SaaS and IaaS apps for security risks

The research also discovered that 62% of organizations that have adopted the cloud say improved threat detection is the most critical threat management capability. Other capabilities most in demand involve data encryption (cited by 72%), traffic encryption (cited by 60%) and access controls (cited by 56%).

As for cloud-specific concerns, the problems that organizations are struggling with the most include data leakage (cited by 57%), data privacy (cited by 49%), confidentiality (cited by 47%) and compliance (cited by 36%).