Trend Micro Survey Confirms Organizations Struggle With a Lack of Security Talent and Tidal Waves of Threat Alerts

Nearly 50 percent of organizations surveyed lack the necessary talent to maintain security measures

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LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today reported survey results that the ongoing and often detrimental shortage of cybersecurity talent has led a majority of organizations to turn outward for help. This is most often seen through automating technology, increasing training programs, and outsourcing detection and prevention.

Regardless of their size, organizations today share a common challenge: IT security teams are understaffed and overextended. The number of security alerts, the challenge of what to prioritize, and the shortage of expertise can be overwhelming and introduce risk.

The research – which surveyed 1,125 IT decision makers across the globe¹ – shows that 69 percent of organizations agree that automating cybersecurity tasks using Artificial Intelligence (AI) would reduce the impact from the lack of security talent. This comes after 64 percent of organizations experienced increased cyber threats in the last year.

“There’s a real and critical shortage of cybersecurity people. But there’s a fix for it today,” said Greg Young, vice president for cybersecurity at Trend Micro commented. “AI and machine learning can reduce the workload today on the people we have, by handling the low value tasks we currently use our high value people for. Next is lowering the tsunami of low value alerts we throw at teams. More security products adding more alerts is not helpful, instead when we add smarter and integrated security it should have more intelligence and be better integrated, ideally reducing junk alerts. More security data collected doesn’t have to mean more alerts, that data should be used to weed out the false alarms. Let staff focus on the real and complex attacks. Satisfying work is a staff retention element in this tight cybersecurity people market.”

From the survey, 63 percent of IT decision makers plan to leverage AI technology to automate their security processes. However, while AI can effectively handle data processing, trained cybersecurity professionals are needed to analyze the results and manage the overall security strategy.

According to Gartner², “The shortage of skilled security professionals has been a perennial problem that consistently results in failed security technology deployments. The number of unfilled cybersecurity roles is expected to grow from 1 million in 2018 to 1.5 million by the end of 2020.”

The Gartner report continues, “Most organizations are struggling to fill the open positions they have, let alone retain skilled staff. Managed detection and response (MDR) services are filling the need of organizations of all sizes that lack internal security resources and expertise, and want to expand their investments beyond preventive security technologies to address their detection, response and 24/7 monitoring gaps.”

To help solve this business problem, Trend Micro tackles both the technology and people needs of the skills gap. Companies are increasingly adopting Trend Micro’s MDR and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions to streamline visibility, prioritize threats and optimize the time and talent of in-house teams.

Research methodology

Research carried out by Opinium, commissioned by Trend Micro. Online survey among 1,125 IT decision-makers responsible for cybersecurity across the UK, US, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, France, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Czech Republic.
 

¹ Countries surveyed include: UK, US, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, France, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Czech Republic
² Gartner, Top Security and Risk Management Trends, 31 January 2019