A new survey of 300 senior security professionals highlights that businesses are struggling to adapt and scale their security operations in the face of talent shortages and new threats from AI, with 65 percent saying they need to rapidly upgrade security monitoring and threat detection due to AI concerns.
The study from enterprise CMS company Storyblok asked respondents to rank how they expected AI to impact company security practices in the coming year. 54 percent say identity and access management would become more complex, and 50 percent believe stronger data protection and privacy controls are required.
However, meeting these demands is unlikely to be straightforward, with 50 percent responding that talent and skills shortages were a major barrier to improving security, followed by the complexity of legacy tech systems (46 percent), regulatory uncertainty (45 percent) and budget limitations (42 percent).
Website security remains a key area of concern. Only 49 percent of businesses say they’re ‘fully prepared’ for a security incident and 39 percent reported a security issue impacting their content strategy in the past year. 62 percent cite data encryption and privacy as an area which needs to be prioritized for future website security investment, followed by user authentication and control (56 percent), and AI powered security tools (51 percent).
The top three security threats identified by businesses are threats from hackers and malware (54 percent), employee human error (47 percent), and AI introducing new risks (45 percent).
Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of Storyblok, says:
It will not come as a surprise to many that new threats from AI are top of mind for security professionals. However, recognising the problem and adapting to it are very different propositions. Our research shows that legacy systems, skills shortages and outdated websites are all areas of vulnerability for many businesses. This goes beyond the immediate potential damage of a hack but also hinders day-to-day business operations like content strategies, as well as long term strategic goals, such as scaling internationally.
On one hand the vast majority of professionals say that their security operations are ‘above average’, on the other 90 percent say they have had at least one security incident in the past year. Complacency is a real risk factor. This is why it is critical that businesses look at upgrading their tech infrastructure as both a commercial and a security necessity.
Looking ahead to threats in the next three to five years, increasing use of AI is unsurprisingly number one at 55 percent, followed by cloud adoption and multi-cloud complexity (49 percent), and growing global regulatory and compliance requirements (45 percent).
You can read more on the Storyblok site.
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