Cybersecurity is Leading Business Concern for IT Leaders, Ahead of Inflation, Supply Chain and Talent, According to a Rackspace Technology Research
September 13 2022 - 9:05AM
Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT) a leading end-to-end multicloud
technology services company, today announced over half (59%) of
global IT leaders cite cybersecurity one of their C-suite’s
top-three business concerns, ahead of issues such as inflation
(51%) retaining and hiring talent (45%) and supply chain/logistics
management (45%), according to a new survey of 1,420 global IT
professionals conducted by Rackspace Technology.
Despite sizable increases in their cybersecurity investment,
greater board visibility and increased collaboration between the
security team and the C-suite, less than half of respondents (43%)
say that they are protecting critical data and assets from threat.
Moreover, a large majority report being either unprepared or only
“somewhat prepared” to respond to major threats, such as
identifying and mitigating threats and areas of concern (62%),
recovering from cyberattacks (61%) or preventing lapses and
breaches (63%). When asked to name the top three cybersecurity
challenges their organization is facing, migrating and operating
apps to the cloud led the way (45%), followed by a shortage of
workers with cybersecurity skills (39%), and a lack of visibility
of vulnerabilities across all infrastructure (38%).
“As more and more organizations migrate their IT infrastructure
away from data centers and advance their cloud transformation
initiatives, they are 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 70% 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
(59%), data security (50%), consultative security services (44%)
and application security (41%). According to the survey, cloud
native security is also the area where organizations are most
likely to rely on an outside partner for expertise.
These investments align closely with the areas where
organizations perceive their greatest concentration of threats, led
by network security (58%), closely followed by web application
attacks (53%) and cloud architecture attacks (50%).
“We are seeing a major shift in how organizations are allocating
resources to address cyberthreats, even as budgets increase,” said
Gary Alterson, Vice President, Security Solutions at Rackspace
Technology. “The cloud brings with it a new array of security
challenges that require new expertise, and often reliance on
external partners who can help implement cloud native security
tools, automate security, provide cloud native application
protection, offer container security solutions and other
capabilities.”
Security Teams and the C-Suite
The survey also looked closely at the relationship between
security teams, boards and C-suite executives. 70% of respondents
say there has been an increase in board visibility for
cybersecurity over the past five years, while 69% cite better
collaboration between the security team and members of the C-suite.
Only 13% of respondents said there were significant communications
gaps between the security team and C-suite, while 69% of IT
executives view their counterparts in the C-suite as advocates for
their concerns.
“It is gratifying to see that IT security and leadership teams
have made strides in eliminating silos and facilitating better
communication and preparedness plans around threats and
priorities,” commented Jeff DeVerter, Rackspace Technology Chief
Technology Evangelist. “Overall, companies are much more
sophisticated about cybersecurity, and better understand where they
face challenges. At the same time, given the dearth of IT talent
and the new skill sets that the cloud requires, they also
understand where they need guidance.”
Survey Methodology
The survey was conducted by Coleman Parkes Research in July
2022. Findings are based on the responses of 1,420 IT
decision-makers across manufacturing, retail, hospitality/travel,
healthcare/pharma/biomedical, government and financial services
sectors in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Click here to view Rackspace Technology’s infographic and white
paper based on the survey findings.
About Rackspace TechnologyRackspace
Technology is a leading end-to-end multicloud technology
services company. We can design, build and operate our customers’
cloud environments across all major technology platforms,
irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner
with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling
them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt
innovative technologies.
Contact: Casey
Shillingpublicrelations@rackspace.com
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