Pictured: Brian Spanswick, chief information and security officer with Cohesity

Inadequate collaboration within organisations is heightening exposure to cyberthreats, a new survey has revealed.

Research commissioned by data management specialist Cohesity has shown that while IT and security operations (SecOps) teams believe in theory that they should share responsibility for data security strategy, many are not working in unison to address growing cyber threats.

The research is based on an April 2022 survey of more than 2,000 IT decision-makers and SecOps professionals in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Nearly three-quarters of those asked (72%) in the UK believe the threat of ransomware in their industry has increased over the last year, with more than half of respondents (51%) saying their organisation has been the victim of a ransomware attack in the last six months.

In many cases, even though the threat of cyberattacks has increased, the level of collaboration between IT and SecOps has remained stagnant or has declined: 43% of respondents, overall, said collaboration between the two groups has remained the same even in light of increased cyberattacks, while 8% of all respondents said collaboration has actually decreased.

The on-going tech talent shortage is making matters worse. When asked if the talent shortage is impacting the collaboration between IT and security teams, 75% of respondents said it is having an impact.

“This research pinpoints there is often a lack of collaboration between IT and security teams that we’re seeing across many organisations today,” said Brian Spanswick, chief information and security officer with Cohesity. “This communication gap must be closed if organisations want to win the battle against cyber threats and ransomware. For too long, many security teams focused primarily on preventing cyberattacks, while IT teams have focused on data protection, including backup and recovery. A complete data security strategy must bring these two worlds together, but in many cases they remain separate and this lack of collaboration gives cyber criminals the room they need to often deliver successful attacks and put companies at the mercy of bad actors.”

Cybersecurity will be just one of the major topics up for discussion at the following face to face live event this coming September:

https://www.netevents.org/events/global-media-summit/