82% of New Zealand Organisations Think They’ll Be Breached in 2022

Remote working and cloud infrastructure top cyber risk for organisations

AUCKLAND, April 19, 2022 – Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global cybersecurity leader, today announced the findings of its latest global Cyber Risk Index (CRI) for the second half of 2021. The results revealed that 82% of New Zealand organisations think they’ll be successfully attacked in the next 12 months, with 21% claiming this is “very likely” to happen.

To view the full report, CRI 2022, please visit: http://www.trendmicro.co.nz/cyberrisk

“To craft effective cybersecurity strategy, organisations must master the art of risk management. This is where reports like the CRI can be a great resource in highlighting areas of possible concern,” said Mick McCluney, Technical Director ANZ, Trend Micro. “As remote working and digital infrastructure threats persist, organisations should adopt a platform-based approach to optimise security whilst minimising their security sprawl.”

The semi-yearly CRI report asks pointed questions to measure the gap between respondents’ preparedness of attack and their likelihood of being attacked*.
In this report, 87% of New Zealanders claimed to have suffered one or more successful cyber-attacks in the past 12 months, with 20% saying they’d experienced 10 or more.
Threats they’re most concerned about locally are advanced persistent threats (APT), phishing/social engineering, and botnets—and the negative consequences of a breach are stolen or damaged equipment, cost of outside consultants/experts, and customer turnover.

When it comes to IT infrastructure, New Zealand organisations are most worried about data centres cloud computing (with a “high risk” score of 7.21 / 10), followed by mobile/remote employees, and cloud computing.

This highlights the ongoing challenge many organisations have around securing the digital investments they made during the pandemic. Such investments were necessary to support remote working, drive business efficiencies and agility, and understand the corporate attack surface.

“Organisations are facing demanding security challenges every day, from software vulnerabilities, data breaches, to ransomware attacks and more,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of Ponemon Institute. “The semi-annual survey has been a tremendous asset in evaluating the rapidly evolving cyber risk landscape to help organisations improve security readiness and serving as a guidance in strategic planning.”

The highest levels of risk for New Zealand organisations were around the following statements:

• My organisation’s IT security personnel have sufficient knowledge, skill and expertise to protect data assets and IT infrastructure.
• My organisation’s IT security function is quick to test and install all security patches.
• My organisation’s IT security function has the ability to unleash countermeasures (such as honeypots) to gain intelligence about the attacker.

This clearly indicates that more resources must be diverted to people, processes, and technology globally to enhance preparedness and reduce overall risk levels.

* An index value is calculated from this information based on a numerical scale of -10 to 10, with -10 representing the highest level of risk.

 

 

About Trend MicroTrend Micro, a global cybersecurity leader, helps make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Fuelled by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation, Trend Micro's cybersecurity platform protects hundreds of thousands of organisations and millions of individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints. As a leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, the platform delivers a powerful range of advanced threat defence techniques optimised for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google, and central visibility for better, faster detection and response. With 7,000 employees across 65 countries, Trend Micro enables organisations to simplify and secure their connected world. http://www.trendmicro.com.nz/