SecureAge Technology, a global data and endpoint protection company, announced the release of its 2021 COVID & Cybersecurity Study. Polling 200 employers and 400 employees from around the UK business world during Q3 2021, the study examined key cybersecurity topics and trends.
A survey conducted by SecureAge has found that 48 percent of businesses have experienced a cyber breach during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another eight percent thought they might have and 16 percent of employees said they had personally had to deal with a cybersecurity incident during the same period.
SecureAge Technologies technical director Nigel Thorpe said that COVID-19 created one of the most challenging periods ever for businesses, their staff and IT departments.
“A new wave of COVID-inspired cybersecurity threats put the most robust defences to the test and exposed failures in planning, training, tools and overall preparedness. The level of breaches and confusion among employees demonstrates how disorganised and fragmented the cybersecurity landscape has become.”
While attacks were targeted specifically at the vast number of people forced to work from home, the SecureAge survey shows that many employers did not provide the level of cybersecurity training to raise awareness of critical threats. Less than half of employers that responded said they provided formal training in detecting and handling suspicious emails, password security and protecting sensitive information when working remotely.
“Employers need to deliver more in-depth training or better still, remove the ‘weakest link’ by taking the human element out of cybersecurity altogether”, said Thorpe.
The SecureAge survey also highlighted a lack of trust in cybersecurity defences. Only around a third of employers and employees said that they are “very confident” that their cybersecurity infrastructure would protect them from a cyberattack. The pandemic has exposed shortcomings in cybersecurity that are now being addressed.
The survey shows that some two-thirds of businesses (66 percent) are set to boost their investment in cybersecurity, with around 32 percent of these planning to increase budgets by up to 50 percent. Meanwhile, 86 percent of employers have already begun to adopt new security measures to cope with the remote workforce.
