Half of the companies have suffered financial losses
Cupertino, October 8, 2019 – October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. To gain a better understanding of cyber security handling, the OTRS Group conducted a survey among 280 IT managers worldwide[1]. A key finding: The majority (61 percent) of all respondents say they deal with security incidents at least once per week. When assessing how dangerous cyberattacks are on the company, 18 percent of respondents rated the security risk as very high. Half (50 percent) even stated that their company had suffered financial losses due to security incidents. When asked whether the incidents were handled optimally, opinions differ: almost half (49 percent) said everything worked well, while the other half (49 percent) thought there was a lot of potential for improvement. The remaining two percent are still struggling to deal with the consequences of security incidents in general.
IT managers value clearly defined processes and government regulations
In all three countries, the majority of IT managers (37 percent in the USA, 42 percent in Brazil, 41 percent in Germany) responded that more clearly defined processes would be the biggest help in adequately dealing with security incidents.
In addition, most respondents believe that government regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and LGPD (Lei Geral de Protecao / Brazil) help to keep data secure.
Country comparison results
USA appears to be the country with the highest number of security incidents. Here, 68 percent responded that these occur on a weekly basis or more often. In Brazil, 59 percent speak of weekly or more frequent incidents; and in Germany, this is only 57 percent.
When asked what wastes the most time when it comes to addressing security incidents, the country opinions also differ slightly: More than a third (32 percent) of the German respondents state as their top answer that documenting everything after an incident wastes the most time. In Brazil (36 percent) say that the greatest challenge seems to be finding information quickly enough, which also applies to the USA (27 percent).
In Germany, IT managers seem to be most skeptical about government regulations such as GDPR: Although 54 percent of German respondents said that the regulations would help to ensure data security, 86 percent in Brazil and 61 percent in the USA are of this opinion.
“A frightening result is that the majority of respondents report at least one weekly IT security incident. Yet only a few incidents are reported at all,” comments Jens Bothe, Director Global Consulting at OTRS AG and security expert, after reviewing the results. “Since October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, we would like to make businesses particularly attentive to the dangers. I advise all companies to review their security strategy and clearly define all processes – both in terms of time and personnel – in advance.”
Read more about OTRS security solutions here.
[1] The survey was conducted online via Pollfish in September 2019 among 280 IT managers in Germany, USA and Brazil (80 respondents in Germany, 100 respondents in the USA, 100 respondents in Brazil).
About OTRS Group
OTRS Group is the manufacturer and the world’s largest provider of the service management suite OTRS, awarded with the SERVIEW CERTIFIED TOOL seal of approval. It offers flexible solutions for process and communication management to companies of all sizes, saving them time and money. Among its customers are Lufthansa, Airbus, IBM, Porsche, Siemens, BSI (Federal Office for Security in Information Technology), Max Planck Institute, Toyota, Hapag Lloyd and Banco do Brazil (Bank of Brazil). More than 170,000 companies worldwide use OTRS, including over 40 percent of the DAX 30 companies. OTRS is available in 40 languages. The company consists of OTRS AG and its six subsidiaries OTRS Inc. (USA), OTRS S.A. de C.V. (Mexico), OTRS Asia Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), OTRS Asia Ltd. (Hong Kong), OTRS do Brasil Soluções Ltda. (Brazil) and OTRS Magyarország Kft. (Hungary). OTRS AG is listed on the basic board of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. For more information, see www.otrs.com