Ten facts every cybersecurity professional should know

If you hold any job related to incident response or security operations analytics and reporting, you’ve likely been inundated with news stories about data breaches and attacks by hackers on businesses of all sizes across numerous verticals. But with all that noise, it can be difficult to sort out the information that truly matters, like the hard data that helps you decide which solutions to adopt, gives you a powerful case to bring to your executive team for a larger cybersecurity budget next quarter, or simply reassures you that your peers are facing similar challenges.

For that reason, we’ve assembled some of the most impactful, telling statistics related to information security in one place—here:

1. Cyber attacks cost businesses $400 billion every year—Lloyd’s of London, 2015

2. Some 42 percent of survey respondents said security education and awareness for new employees played a role in deterring a potential criminal. — “US cybercrime: Rising risks, reduced readiness; Key findings from the 2014 US State of Cybercrime Survey,” PwC

3. There are more than 1 million unfilled information security jobs globally; by 2017 that number may be as high as 2 million — “2014 Annual Security Report,” Cisco; UK Parliament Lords’ Digital Skills Committee witness interview

4. The malware used in the Sony hack would have slipped past 90 percent of defenses today. — Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, during a U.S. Senate hearing

5. The average U.S. business deals with 10,000 security alerts per day. — “State of Infections Report Q1 2014,” Damballa

6. A significant 90 percent of CISOs cite salary as the top barrier to proper staffing. — “State governments at risk: time to move forward,” Deloitte/NASCIO

7. About 43 percent of businesses experienced a data breach in 2014. — “Is Your Company Ready for a Big Data Breach? The Second Annual Study on Data Breach Preparedness,” Experian/Ponemon Institute

8. Just 21 percent of IT professionals are confident that their information security technologies can mitigate risk. — “2015 Vulnerability Study,” EiQ Networks

9. As many as 75 percent of breaches go undiscovered for weeks or months. — Michael Siegel, research scientist at MIT, at a recent cybersecurity conference

10. In an effort to combat the growing threat of cybercrime, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security increased its cybersecurity budget 500 percent during the past two years; and President Obama included $14 billion for cybersecurity spending in his 2016 budget. — GCN.com, 2015

While each of these statistics reinforce the need for an increase cybersecurity budget, it’s the processes and tools put in place with that increased budget that makes all of the difference. Security automation and orchestration platforms provide a way to increase your analysts output without adding overhead.

To learn more, watch our introductory video on Security Automation and Orchestration.