The United States is the world’s biggest security sieve, judging by Bitdefender’s 2023 Security Assessment.
Of the IT professionals surveyed, 74.7% in the U.S. say their firm
has suffered a data breach or leak within the past 12 months. But the average is 51.7% among all countries in the study.
Worse, 70.7% of IT personnel in the U.S.
have been instructed to keep a breach confidential when it should have been reported, versus 42% worldwide -- while 54.7% of IT staffers in the U.S. have kept a breach under wraps, versus 29.9%
worldwide.
Overall, 72.2% agree they have seen an increase in the sophistication of phishing attacks. That rises to 84% in the U.S.
Why are U.S. firms so
vulnerable, and more likely to cover things up? There may be one simple reason: GDPR.
The other countries represented in this study are the UK, Germany, France, Spain,
Italy and Germany: Except for the UK, all are directly under GDPR.
They know they face penalties for not reporting breaches.
Yet U.S. companies are way more worried about
consequences: 78.7% of the respondents worry about legal action stemming a security breach being handled incorrectly, compared to 54.3% in the other nations.
What
types of security threats are they worried about? Among U.S. firms:
- Software vulnerabilities/zero-days — 80%
- Supply chain attacks — 73.3%
- Phishing/social engineering — 58.7%
- Insider threats —
36.5%
- Ransomware — 45.3%
In contrast, the global worry averages are:
- Software vulnerabilities/zero days
— 53.9%
- Phishing/social engineering — 52.2%
- Supply-chain attacks — 49%
- Ransomware —
48.5%
- Insider threats — 36.5%
- Espionage — 34.1%
- Privilege escalation —
24.1%
Meanwhile, U.S. IT personnel would like to destroy these myths within their organizations:
- Our organization is
not a target for cybercriminals — 42.7%
- Using non-corporate approval apps is not a big deal — 40%
- Security is solely the responsibility of the
IT team — 36%
- An email that comes into the corporate system is always safe to open/click on — 36%
Censuswide, a third-party research
firm, surveyed 400 IT professionals working in organizations with 1000+ employees. They range in title from IT junior managers to CISOs.