November 14, 2016
UK businesses are failing to protect themselves and neglecting cybersecurity for their firm due to a lack of IT resources, according to research from business solutions provider Office Depot. Insights gathered from 500 IT managers working in large UK corporates reveals that three quarters (74 per cent) think their company is neglecting cybersecurity and data protection, with 81 per cent stating that they would benefit from having more time and resources to address these risks. These concerns are not unfounded; in Q2 of 2016, four in five FTSE 100 companies were victim to potentially malicious domain registrations, enabling fraudsters to create dummy websites that can be used to trick users into supplying private data.
With the IT industry in the midst of a widespread skills shortage, poor allocation of resources seems to be the root cause of this issue. On average, IT managers say that over a third of their time is consumed by dealing with low-level hardware and software issues, such as fixing printing equipment, document recovery and troubleshooting, meaning that insufficient time is devoted to more complex tasks such as data security.In total, the allocation of these low-level tasks to senior IT professionals costs businesses in excess of £4.2 billion each year. This figure could be spent on addressing core business risks if resource were better managed.