Rackspace Technology, a leader in end-to-end multi-cloud solutions, has announced that over half (72%) of Singapore IT leaders cite cybersecurity as one of their C-suite’s top-three business concerns, ahead of issues such as price inflation (54%), meeting compliance requirements (42%) and supply chain/logistics management (38%).
Out of the 150 Singapore IT leaders, despite sizable increases in their cybersecurity investment, greater board visibility and increased collaboration between the security team and the C-suite, more than half of them (51%) say that they are managing cybersecurity risks from threats.
However, a large majority report being either ‘fully-prepared’ or ‘somewhat prepared’ to respond to major threats, such as recovering from cyberattacks (51%) or identifying and mitigating threats and areas of concern (50%).
When asked to name the top three cybersecurity challenges their organization is facing, migrating and operating apps to the cloud led the way (42%), users falling for phishing attempts (42%), a shortage of workers with cybersecurity skills (40%).
“As more and more organizations migrate their IT infrastructure away from data centers and advance their cloud transformation initiatives, they are focusing increasing attention on how these changes can impact their security posture,” said Karen O’Reilly-Smith, Chief Security Officer, Rackspace Technology.
“As the survey results demonstrate, cybersecurity continues to be far and away the leading business concern and a major focus of IT investment, but with talent at a premium more organizations are looking outside their four walls for guidance in this new cloud-first world.”
Cloud security leads investment priorities
Despite the economic challenges brought about by the pandemic, organizations show no sign of decreasing their investment in cybersecurity, with 89% of survey respondents reporting that their cybersecurity budgets have increased over the past three years.
The leading recipients of this new investment are cloud-native security (69%), data security (55%), infrastructure detection and response (51%) and consultative security services (44%). According to the survey, cloud-native security is also the area where organizations are most likely to rely on an outside partner for expertise.
“Cyberthreats are continuously evolving in today’s environment, including in Singapore, where visibility into security incidents across multi-cloud and hybrid environments is pertinent,” said Sandeep Bhargava, Managing Director of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Rackspace Technology. “Almost 90% of the Singapore IT leaders claimed that they need more cybersecurity budgets to defend against cyberattackers as they adopt more digital technologies.
“In addition, 40% of organizations are facing a shortage of workers with cybersecurity skills. To overcome the lack of resources and talent, it requires a collaborative effort across enterprises, schools and the government to train and upskill employees.”
These investments align closely with the areas where organizations perceive their greatest concentration of threats, led by network security (61%), closely followed by web application attacks (53%) and cloud architecture attacks (53%).
