Flexible working creating cybersecurity headache for enterprise

Empowering staff to work flexibly is causing a major cybersecurity headache for Australian IT executives, according to a surveycommissioned by Rackspace and AWS.

The survey of just under 200 local IT decision-makers found more than a thirdof respondents identified ‘enabling staff access to data anytime and anywhere’ as posing a high, or extremely high risk to their organisation.

The executives also indicated an overall lack of confidence in cybersecurity capabilities was influencing their organisation’s appetite to incur risks associated with innovation.

According to Rackspace, local organisations placed high importance on improving employee productivity and enhancing business resilience.

Darryn McCoskery, general manager at Rackspace ANZ said cloud transformation can be complex. It affects how and where employees work. However, mixed with the current threat landscape, concerns over data loss are warranted.

“We see this tension first hand with most ITDMs who are seeking to use digital and cloud solutions to improve the way they do business, but who are still concerned about their cybersecurity capabilities holding them back,” he said.

“Although cybersecurity should be a priority for Australian ITDMs, it doesn’t have to stifle innovation.”

Concerns about data were also reflected in Australian ITDMs’ views on the potential effect of cyber breaches. Loss of data ranked highly for its impact on a business, even more so than lost revenue or reputational damage.

However only 11 per cent of respondents identified delegating management to third party managed service providers as presenting no risk at all to their business.

Further, half of all respondents were not highly confident they had access to staff or partners with the skills to manage cybersecurity risks.

Given the importance organisations place on digital transformation, resolving this issue is critical to the longevity of Australian businesses, regardless of size,Rackspace said.

These ambitions however, expose organisations to risk according to those making critical cloud-based decisions. This is further compounded by a lack of confidence in organisational capabilities to manage these risks.

Benefits, as it applies to business’ digital ambitions:

• Improve staff productivity (75 per cent)
• Enhance business resilience (71 per cent)
• Increase in organisational agility (69 per cent)
• Improve customer experience (66 per cent)
• Enable organisations to develop innovative products and services (63 per cent)

The potential effect of cyber security risks/outcomes business:

• Loss of data (86 per cent)
• Business interruption (81 per cent)
• Reputation harm (76 per cent)
• Loss of revenue (67 per cent)
• Regulatory action (67 per cent)

Confidence in business has the following factors in place:

• Security tools (56 per cent)
• Staff with the right skills who are available when you need them (50 per cent)
• Data visibility (48 per cent)
• Partners with the right skills, available when you need them (50 per cent)
• Reporting tools and insights (47 per cent)
• Cloud environments (54 per cent)
• Connectedness between cloud and on-premises environments, staff, sites and partners (44 per cent)