As we draw closer to the end of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it is a good opportunity to reflect on the last 20 years since its establishment. Threats continue to increase and become more sophisticated. A systemic lack of talent adds to the challenges within the industry. According to a recent report by ESG and ISSA, 71% of cybersecurity professionals say their organizations have been impacted by a skills shortage, leading to increased workloads, open jobs, and a high burnout rate. Cybersecurity awareness should not just be recognized one month out of the year. It needs to be an ongoing process that is deeply embedded into the DNA of any organization.
Customers continue to be paralyzed in handling basic security updates while also managing employee access requirements and implementing cybersecurity awareness training. How are they best equipped to deal with wave after wave of new ransomware threats? Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are dealing with complex systems with too many tools that deliver far too many false positives.
This year's Cybersecurity Awareness Month focused on proactive security and ensuring that when an attack happens, you are prepared. The use of strong passwords, two-factor authentication, education, backing up data, and securing home networks are this year's key takeaways for the month.
Cybersecurity preparedness was also a major theme at this year's recent Gartner Symposium in Florida. “There is an infinite list of new and potential threats. The main question is whether the organization needs to address, postpone or ignore these low-signal threats, which can be emerging and dangerous, or overhyped and a distraction,” said Leigh McMullen, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner during his keynote presentation. The widespread use of AI tools such as ChatGPT has increased security concerns.
At ContraForce, our mission is to reduce complexity in security and streamline operations, creating a new workforce environment for security professionals and first level defenders in the SOC. We provide real-time threat detection that is scalable through our easy-to-use platform, empowering the SOC to handle more critical work rather than dealing with false positives. Through automating routine tasks, organizations can reduce complexities and the number of tools that they need to use.
We are excited to see how new technologies such as Generative AI will evolve our future work environment and also challenge our thinking while providing great opportunities to remain secure. It is vital that the entire industry continue to treat security as an ever-evolving part of our daily business and not limit the focus to only be during a certain month each year.
