Above 65% APAC Organizations Say Cybersecurity Hindered their Digital Transformation Progress

Forcepoint unveils the findings of an Asia Pacific study conducted by leading IT analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, revealing that Asia Pacific (APAC) organizations’ failure to prioritize cybersecurity is hindering their digital transformation journey.

The study finds that most APAC organizations (83%) don’t think about cybersecurity while embarking on digital transformation projects. Although the majority of the organizations (72%) conduct regular breach assessment to protect themselves against cyberattacks, still 55% of them were at risk. The study reveals that Cloud is a key component of digital transformation (69% of respondents have adopted cloud) but most organizations think cybersecurity is the responsibility of their cloud service provider.

“It’s clear from this study that many APAC organizations are on the back foot when it comes to enterprise cybersecurity in the borderless organization,” said Kenny Yeo, Industry Principal, APAC ICT, Frost & Sullivan. “Security leaders need to look beyond perimeter security, leverage automation, and have a better grasp of the psychology of both cybercriminals and their business users. Incorporating behaviour modelling into their IT security architecture is certainly a way to identify potential risks and fend off cyberattacks.”

Digital transformation hindered by cyber risks

The study reveals a big push among APAC organizations, with 95% of respondents having embarked on a digital transformation journey, adopting emerging technologies including cloud computing, mobility, internet of things, and artificial intelligence/ machine learning. However, most organizations, 65% of respondents, acknowledged that they are seriously hampered in the execution of digital transformation projects due to rising cyberattacks.

One of the key reasons for this is the less mature approach by business leaders to involve cyber security when designing digital transformation projects. Eighty-Three per cent of the organizations did not consider cybersecurity until after their digital transformation projects had begun.

“Organizations today need to urgently to embrace “secure-by-design” into their digital transformation projects. Adopting a behavior-centric security approach that focuses on understanding users’ behavior on the network and within applications to identify behavioral anomalies can mitigate cyberattacks before they happen,” said Alvin Rodrigues, senior director and security strategist at Forcepoint Asia Pacific.

Serious misconceptions around security in the cloud

Cloud has become one of the key components which is leading digital transformation, with 69% of organizations adopting cloud. However, 54% of respondents perceive that their cloud service provider will take full responsibility for security. Normally, security and compliance are a shared responsibility between an organization and the cloud service provider. This serious misconception around the responsibility of security in the cloud is resulting in a higher number of cyberattacks.

Existing cybersecurity measures are not proving enough for enterprises to protect against cyber incidents The finding suggests that the majority of organizations have taken measures to protect themselves against cyber incidents, with 72% of them performing breach assessments at least once per quarter. Despite the readiness, 55% of organizations were at risk − either they have encountered a security incident before or they didn’t do any checks to assess if they have been breached.

• 35% of APAC organizations suffered at least one cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months.
• On a country level, Indian (69%) and Australian (63%) firms were found to be most at risk of cyberattack.

Security blind spots in digital transformation

The study reveals the impact digital transformation is having on each organization’s risk posture. As more digital technology is built into business like cloud and mobility, it is opening each organization up to more threats. Data exfiltration, impersonation – both theft of digital identity and online brand impersonation − loss of intellectual property and malware infection emerged as the top security blind spots for organizations rolling out digital transformation. These five incidents, the study states, have high levels of business impact and long recovery times.

The Forcepoint - Frost & Sullivan “2019 Risk and Cybersecurity” study

• 400 respondent organizations across the Asia Pacific participated in this study.

o 100 respondents each from Australia, Hong Kong, India and Singapore.

o Organizations hail from key industries like financial services, telecom, manufacturing,

energy & utilities, retail, education and healthcare.

o 53% of the respondents were from large enterprises. The remaining were from midsized enterprises and SMBs.

o 75% of the respondents were C-level executives and senior IT and security decision

makers.