London, UK, March 11, 2014 –  Steria has revealed that 96% of UK’s enterprises believe they are capable of dealing with a major security crisis, however only 19% of enterprises surveyed said they operated 24/7 IT security. This data is taken from a wider study Steria conducted on cyber security, which investigates how threats are perceived by European enterprises. The report can be downloaded from Steria’s website: https://www.steria.com/uk/our-solutions/security/cyber-security/.

The study also reveals the types of security solutions in which firms have invested. For example the data shows that 90% of those polled have implemented identity and access management solutions and one fifth (21%) of those polled plan to implement encryption solutions in the next three years. However, only 14% of organisations with fewer than 5000 employees have invested in a Security Operations Centre, in order to monitor activity and events and ensure that anomalous behaviour is detected, identified, classified and acted upon where appropriate.

The survey also reveals that despite the rise in external attacks[1], many UK enterprises are still more concerned about internal attacks: Over half (59%) of them believe that external attacks account for less than 20% of their overall threats.

The survey also revealed that the top three trends that influence the information security strategy are mobility / BYOD (49%), cloud computing (43%) and business specific security issues (34%). For 69% of enterprises, data theft is one of the three most significant risks that keep them awake at night.

Florent Skrabacz, Head of Security Business from Steria said “While on the one hand it’s encouraging to see that companies are confident in their ability to deal with threats, there is a risk that this confidence is misplaced. Our research indicates that many enterprises have not correctly gauged the security threats that they face. Being properly equipped to deal with cyber risks is vital to enable organisations to make the most of all the business opportunities available in a multi-faceted digital world.”