• by Ray Schultz , April 1, 2022

Malware is the leading source of security attacks worldwide, according to 56% of companies worldwide, according to the 2022 Thales Data Threat Report.

Of the executives polled, 79% worry about the security risks of an increasingly mobile workforce, and 43% have seen an increase in attacks in the past year.  

Worse, 28% said they would not entrust their personal data to their own organization.  

As to who are the villains, 49% see the gravest risks from Nation States, up from 23%% among those who cited this as a Rank 1 or Rank 2 threat in 2021.  

At the same time, 52% of companies have been breached, versus 56% in 2021. And 21% have specifically suffered a ransomware attack. 

But they must doing better — 12% say they have been breached in the last 12 months, compared to 18% in 2021.

In addition, 40% have avoided a breach notification process because the stolen or leaked data data was encrypted or tokenized, down from 46% in 2021. 

Work-at-home technology has altered from one year to the next.  

For example, 26% are using ZTNA/SDP technology in 2022, while 53% did so in 2021. But the percentages for WAM, VDI, Cloud SSO and VPN are fairly stable. 

Here are the percentages of sensitive data in the cloud being encrypted: 

• None      —   1% 
• 0-20%   —    9% 
• 12-40% —   39% 
• 41-60%  —  27% 
• 81-100% — 11% 
• Don’t know — 1%

Thales surveyed 2,767 respondents across the globe in January 2022.