Despite the crippling impact of a cyber breach, the mid-market remains complacent

UK mid-market organisations are ill-equipped to mitigate today’s increasingly complex threat landscape, according research by Node4. The survey shows that 63 per cent of IT decision makers say that security is a top priority; but 25 per cent of mid-market companies don’t even have basic anti-virus protection and up to 67 per cent don’t have intrusion detection in place.

The consequences of inadequate threat management and lack of visibility into the network could have far reaching consequences; and as a crucial sector powering the UK economy, the mid-market should be innovating in security, not failing to implement even the most basic tools.

“Reports of high profile casualties are commonplace, but the threat landscape isn’t one that is only relevant for large enterprises; it’s a critical issue for every organisation. Today, every organisation must assume it is a target. Recent events have raised even more alarms. A cyber breach can cripple a big organisation, but mid-market ones should not remain complacent” Steve Nice, Security Technologist, Node4 said.

Similar researched conducted by Node4 last year revealed that 41% of IT decision makers didn’t know how many intrusions or security breaches their organisation had suffered in the last 12 months; and 46% were concerned about the lack of security for their IT infrastructures. According to the ‘Mid-Market IT priorities 2017’ report, only 54% have data-encryption capabilities and as few as 33% have intrusion detection software. It is clear that despite IT managers in mid-market companies listing the cyber-threat as a priority, firms are not taking action quickly enough.

“It is worrying that, despite IT managers in mid-market companies agreeing that security is a key priority, most firms are still failing to put the necessary measures in place. Many mid-market companies believe that they are not at risk because they aren’t big players. Cyber criminals know it, and are quick to exploit the fact that so many smaller organisations are complacent. The result is a big rise in the volume, complexity and intensity of attacks on mid-market businesses,” added Nice.

As IT architectures are becoming more heterogeneous, and threat vectors are increasing in number and complexity, guarding critical systems can pose an impractical resource commitment on behalf of mid-market organisations. For this reason, Node4 offers a managed security service, N4Secure, that combines the expertise of cybersecurity specialists with top-of-the-range monitoring systems to detect and fight unseen security breaches and mitigate incursions before they appear.