Although ransomware is the primary security concern for most businesses, almost as many fear zero-day attacks just as much, a new study has found.
In fact, the two were ranked as the biggest threats by more than half of the respondents, out-scoring other traditional threats including state-sponsored attacks in a survey conducted by cybersecurity vendor Deep Instinct, which questioned 600 IT and cybersecurity professionals in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and France.
Deep Instinct says the intention of the survey is to highlight the current and emerging security threats, and their impact on the day-to-day lives of SecOps professionals.
“As we work to implement a stronger layer of defense, it will be just as important to protect the hard-working employees that sit in the SOC [Security Operations Center] as it is to secure the business,” said Guy Caspi, CEO of Deep Instinct.
Automated defense
Deep Instinct, which offers a purpose-built deep learning framework for cybersecurity, is using the surrey to build a case for automation, and suggests that machine learning will play a significant role in cybersecurity in the coming times.
For instance, it found, rather unsurprisingly, that ransomware has cemented its status as a global concern. However, many respondents shared that they spend about ten hours a week assessing false positive alerts.
Worryingly, a majority (62%) agree that the overwhelming volume of false positives allows the real threats to slip through the gaps.
No wonder then that 71% of the respondents agreed that automation of cybersecurity is the only viable solution for addressing cyber threats, with most (84%) of the opinion that a blend of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning is essential for reining in the growing number of cyber threats.
