FEATURE
now spending almost a third of their IT
budget (£6.9 million) on cybersecurity
and budgets are expected to rise over
the next two years across all segments.
Both SMBs and enterprises predict
they will spend up to 15% more on
cybersecurity over this period.
Why? Because the consequences of
a cybersecurity incident can spread
far and wide. WannaCry stopped the
production lines of five Renault factories,
while exPetr disrupted business
operations at Maersk, the world’s largest
container ship and supply company,
resulting in losses of between £155
million and £250 million pounds.
Along with undermining current
business operations, cyberthreats
are also impacting future-focused
initiatives. Digital Transformation and
business mobility require organisations
to operate a growing IT infrastructure,
meaning they often lack visibility into
their hybrid clouds.
The battle for business buy-in:
Three ways to justify your IT
security spend
Maxim
Frolov,
Vice President
of Global
MAXIM
FROLOV,
VICE
Sales
at Kaspersky
Lab
PRESIDENT
OF GLOBAL
SALES
AT KASPERSKY LAB
Proving ROI in IT security has
traditionally been a struggle for IT
professionals, who need to balance
budget limitations while constantly
fighting to stay ahead of the dynamic
threat landscape.
However, businesses are now starting to
treat IT security as an investment, rather
than simply a cost-centre – according to
a recent Kaspersky Lab report.
Costly cybersecurity incidents
are affecting current and future
business operations
Businesses of all sizes and industries
are realising that they have to prioritise
cybersecurity spend. Enterprises are
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Issue 10
Consequently, data is being put at risk
of compromise or even encryption.
Moreover, the costs of dealing with the
consequences of a cybersecurity threat
are on the rise – due to factors such
as having to hire external consultants,
acquiring new software, dealing with PR
risks and litigations, etc.
With costs rising and crucial business
operations being put at risk, it’s no
surprise that top management is now
getting involved in the cybersecurity
provisioning debate. But it’s not just their
own infrastructure that they have to be
thinking about.
Even if your corporate perimeter
is protected, you cannot be so
sure about your suppliers
It’s important to understand that a
breach can happen even if the business’
own corporate network has the
necessary level of protection – through
supply chain attacks or breaches as
a result of vulnerabilities in third party
legitimate software.
For enterprises, data protection
remains a critical issue even if a threat
is somewhere outside the corporate
perimeter – data breaches resulting
from incidents affecting suppliers which
businesses share data with cost them
up to £900,000 million on average.
And, with data being stored in multiple
locations, cybersecurity becomes a
significant challenge.
Business data must be protected,
wherever it is
It’s no secret that cloud services offer
many benefits to businesses, from taking
advantage of a more efficient mobile
workforce, to reducing infrastructure
costs and optimising business operations.
As such, 73% of SMBs use at least one
SaaS hosted business application, while
45% of enterprises have either already
raised or are planning to grow their use
of hybrid cloud in the next six months.
However, as businesses move more and
more data to the cloud, they often end
up losing visibility of their data exposure.
Data ‘on the go’ that is actually stored
outside of the corporate data centre –
e.g. in third party IT infrastructure – is
presenting businesses with new security
issues and new costs.
In summary
These insights help explain why
cybersecurity should be prioritised
across companies in any industry – it is
a prevalent issue for companies of any
size, because virtually every company
today deals with third party contractors,
cloud infrastructure and a growing
amount of sensitive business data. u
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