Data Protection Technologies
The new year starts on a promising note for enterprises in the European Union, who are actively seeking and investing in data protection technologies as these move into technology platforms and are giving greater emphasis on cloud and mobile securities. With the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance deadline fast approaching on 25th May this year, European firms are continuing their expenditure on cloud and mobile platform security with a foray into deception technologies. Here are some interesting statistics-
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP) has aroused increased interest in security initiatives with 55% of the organizations planning to actively implement it in 2021. This is a whopping 106% increase from the previous year as per the Computer Weekly and TechTarget IT Priorities survey. But organizations are increasingly opting for other security measures other than cloud DLP and this is reflected with DLP dropping from the top spot in 2016 to the eighth position in 2017 in the UK.
- Enterprises are moving towards Identity and Access Management (IAM) and this is up by around 42% of the European firms showing an affinity for improved data security technologies. This is up 58% when compared to 2017 with organizations attempting to have greater access control to crucial data.
- The other area of interest in data security is the deployment of planned network access control with investments up to 46% in this and 39% of the enterprises planning to actively pursue this mode of data protection technologies in 2021.
- Also, patch management has taken top priority with 39% of the European firms planning security initiatives around this and this is 51% up from the previous year in light of the Equifax and WannaCry breaches. These breaches made the organizations take notice of the need for effective patch management and highlighted the renewed interest in this area of data protection techniques.
Data Protection Technologies Training Will Get the Much Needed Investment Boost
It is no surprise that data breaches have seen a continuous escalation in recent years and this can be attributed to the lack of security awareness and training.
- Noting this disturbing fact, 43% of the European organizations are wholeheartedly planning to invest in imparting user training in 2021 and this is a steady 29% jump from the previous year.
- Also, 46% of the companies polled planned to increase user training, which is a whopping 99% jump from 2017.
- The enterprises have realized the importance of security training and this is proven by the fact that in 2017 only 27% of the European companies and 33% of the companies in the UK valued it compared with 2016. Even for simple tasks like regular messaging, user training can prove to be beneficial and help employees to recognize and respond to phishing attacks. This is the first step towards cybersecurity and is highly effective as per the security industry experts.
- The other area where enterprises have shown maturity is in the deployment of single sign-on (SSO), wherein, employees need to remember a single complex password to access their data assets securely across multiple systems. 31% of the European companies have scheduled investments in this area which is an increase of 49% when compared to 2017.
- 31% of the industries are planning to go for security in the network area and this is a slight 1% drop from 2017.
- The next-generation firewalls are getting priority from 35% of the organizations, which is an increase of 44% from 2017. So what comes to light is that enterprises are still betting on traditional security technologies knowing that they may not keep pace with the recent emerging threats.
- 10% of the companies are planning to invest in deception technologies and although minute, this is a 97% increase from the previous year.
Data Security Technologies Spending on an Overall Rise
While the above statistics clearly show that there is an overall increased expenditure on cloud security, mainly driven by compliance regulation, it is still surprising that investment in traditional security technologies has remained unchanged and strong. Even though the new security technologies help in negating emerging cloud security threats, the investment in them is tentative and limited. Security experts feel that this is going to change as more enterprises adopt a risk-based approach to security.
While companies are still hooked on the old security measures, there is a need to have a renewed interest in newer data protection tools like IAM, deception, and SSO, which are all parts of the Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions suites.