Firms lack internal security skills finds Spiceworks

Even though cybercrime and IT attacks targeting businesses continue to rise, organisations are simply not keeping pace with the threat, with a lack of in-house security skills leaving them vulnerable.

In its latest survey, IT professionals network Spiceworks asked members whether the organisations they worked for are responding adequately to the heightened levels of cyber attacks.

It was found that less than a third (29 percent) of organisations have a cyber security expert working in the IT department, and only 7 percent have an expert in another department.

In addition, under a quarter (23 percent) contract outside experts to help fill the knowledge gap, and over half (55 percent) of organisations don’t have regular access to any IT security experts at all.

Also, it was found that 67 percent of IT pros do not have any security certifications.

Despite this however, 80 percent of IT pros felt confident in their ability to respond to cyber attacks on endpoints like laptops, desktops and servers.

But they were less confident in their ability to respond to cyber attacks on less traditional IT devices and services, such as tablets (58 percent), smartphones (52 percent), cloud services (44 percent) and IoT devices (36 percent).

Spiceworks questioned over 600 of its members in the UK and the US for its research.

@AntonySavvas