Half of UK organisations feel they lack the in-house skills to deal with the current cyber threat landscape, research has found.
Two thirds of the IT decision makers quizzed by Databarracks said they had been affected by a cyber threat in the past 12 months, with just 53% feeling they have the skills to deal with attacks of this nature.
The results support findings from the British government, which last year added cyber security to the UK skills shortage register.
A third of respondents admitted they had reviewed policies and made changes following an attack, compared to 29% in 2014.
More than half of respondents said they have invested in new safeguards to protect specifically against cyber threats in the last year.
>See also: The 2016 cyber security roadmap
Ongoing cyber awareness training, cyber threat monitoring software and official cyber security policies were the most common investments.
“This is a definite step in the right direction,” said Oscar Arean, technical operations manager at Databarracks, “but it seems that current resilience planning is mostly inward-looking at this point, as only 5% of respondents had invested in a certification to a cyber security framework.
“Considering confidence in in-house skills is so low, it’s likely we’ll see an increase in adoption of security frameworks in the coming years.”
“Ultimately, cyber threats aren’t going anywhere. It’s encouraging to see organisation reviewing and updating security policies following attacks, but the next step is to become more proactive.”
