Intelligent CIO North America Issue 26 | Page 24

TRENDING
In many cases , even though the threat of cyberattacks has increased , the level of collaboration between IT and SecOps has remained stagnant or has declined : 40 % of respondents , overall , said collaboration between the two groups has remained the same even in light of increased cyberattacks . And , 12 % of all respondents said collaboration has actually decreased . While only 5 % of IT decision makers said collaboration has decreased , nearly one in five ( 18 %) of SecOps respondents believe that is the case , highlighting disparity between the two functions .
The on-going tech talent shortage is making matters worse : When asked if the talent shortage is impacting the collaboration between IT and security teams , 78 % of respondents ( 77 % of IT decision-makers and 78 % of SecOps ) said : ‘ Yes , it is having an impact .’
As a result of this lack of collaboration between IT and SecOps , many respondents believe their organization is more exposed : Among the IT and SecOps respondents who believe the collaboration is weak between the two groups , 42 % believe their organization is either more exposed ( 28 %), or much more exposed ( 14 %) to cyberthreats .
The survey was conducted as nearly threequarters ( 74 %) of respondents believe the threat of ransomware in their industry has increased over the last year , with nearly half of respondents ( 47 %) saying their organization has been the victim of a ransomware attack in the last six months .
The survey uncovered the following results globally :
The consequences of that exposure could be devastating for businesses and for careers : When asked what would be their worst fear about a lack of collaboration between security and IT if an attack takes place , 42 % of all respondents are concerned about a loss of data , 42 % fear business disruption , 40 % are worried customers will take their business elsewhere , 35 % fear finger-pointing will take place and their team will be blamed should any mistakes occur , 32 % are worried about paying ransomware , and 30 % fear people from both teams ( IT and SecOps ) will be fired .
Security should be a shared responsibility : More than four in five ( 81 %) of respondents overall ( 86 % of IT decision-makers and 76 % of SecOps ) somewhat or strongly agree that IT and SecOps should share the responsibility for their organization ’ s data security strategy .
But effective collaboration between IT and security teams is frequently not happening : Almost a third of SecOps respondents ( 31 %) believe the collaboration is not strong with IT , with 9 % of those respondents going so far as to call it ‘ weak .’ Among IT decision-makers , more than a tenth of respondents ( 13 %), believe collaboration with SecOps is not strong . In total , nearly a quarter ( 22 %) of IT and SecOps respondents overall believe the collaboration between the two groups is not strong .
“ This research pinpoints there is often a lack of collaboration between IT and security teams that we ’ re seeing across many organizations today ,” said Brian Spanswick , Chief Information Security Officer , Cohesity .
“ For too long , many security teams focused primarily on preventing cyberattacks , while IT teams have focused on data protection , including backup and recovery .
“ A complete data security strategy must bring these two worlds together – but in many cases , they remain separate and this lack of collaboration creates significant business risks and can put companies at the mercy of bad actors .”
To further drive this point home , when respondents were asked how their company prioritized data
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