Data leakages of internal systems caused either by cyberattacks (20%) or employees (21%) in the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa (META) region are the most concerning security issue encountered by SMBs and enterprises.
Respondents in a Kaspersky IT Security Economics survey say that heightened concerns over data protection increasingly also turns business leaders’ attention to the transparency policies of their suppliers.
Global digitalisation has inevitably led to massive amounts of data being shared and stored online. According to the latest estimates, the volume of data generated, consumed, copied, and stored is projected to reach more than 180 zettabytes by 2025. However, more and more people question companies’ ability to keep their data secure which leads to a decline in confidence towards business.
Kaspersky’s global research, conducted among IT decision-makers, shows a loss or exposure of corporate and customer information because of a data breach is a major headache for companies – 55% of respondents from organisations of all sizes in the META region named this issue the most challenging aspect related to IT security.
Among other most common concerns there are cost of securing increasingly complex technology environments and issues with cloud infrastructure adoption with 43% and 39% share respectively.
Thinking more specifically about the most distributing security challenges respondents from the META region mostly indicated leakage of data from internal systems caused by cyber-attacks (20%) and by employees (21%). Globally, these incidents have topped identifying vulnerabilities in company’s IT system and incidents affecting IT infrastructure hosted by a third-party noted by 20% and 19% respectively.
Given that data protection has turned into the most alarming business security issue, companies are now attaching considerable importance to their suppliers’ and contractors’ transparency policies. Of those questioned in the META region, 96% consider the presence, or absence of transparency policies is important for going into business with a supplier or contractor.
And, while 81 % of surveyed organisations in the META region already have transparency policies in their organisations, 82% confirmed their readiness to invest resources in developing it further.
“Today, we see organisations are being more conscientious when it comes to data security and that a responsible approach towards data management is becoming an essential when considering suppliers and contractors,” comments Yuliya Shlychkova, the head of public affairs at Kaspersky. “To help their customers and partners ascertain that the required standards for ensuring data security are applied, more and more companies are adopting transparency policies.”