APJ businesses are spending more on security, but still respond reactively: Sophos

Sophos, a global cybersecurity provider, has revealed that businesses are increasingly prioritising budget for cybersecurity. In 2022, 11% of technology budgets are dedicated to cybersecurity, an increase from 8.6% the previous year, Sophos research* has found.

Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) organisations have identified threat hunting as a key consideration for strengthening cybersecurity defences. Most organisations (90%) undertook threat hunting to bolster their cybersecurity capabilities in 2021; of those that did, 85% stated the approach is critical or important to their company’s overall cybersecurity capabilities.

“It’s great to see organisations taking cybersecurity more seriously, with budgets and maturity levels on the rise and organisations looking to build threat hunting into their cyberdefence strategies,” said Aaron Bugal, Global Solutions Engineer at Sophos.

“Given that threat hunting has become a priority for the majority of organisations, it’s interesting to see that cybersecurity professionals rank ‘not being able to keep up with the pace of threats’ in their top five frustrations in 2022, as indicated in the survey.

“Even with the additional investment, organisations need to ensure they are not overstating their maturity levels and the implementation of threat hunting solutions, leading to complacency. With increased maturity and investment, one would think successful cyberattacks would decline, however they continue to wreak havoc. Sophos’ State of Ransomware Report reveals 72% of APJ organisations were hit by ransomware in 2021, up from 39% in 2020. With this in mind, it’s important organisations review their cyber strategies regularly and address the gaps.”

Sophos has seen an uptick in the number of instances where organisations are being attacked multiple times — sometimes simultaneously.

“Organisations must be active in their approach to combatting cyberattacks, with threat hunting functioning as an always-on activity and not a once- or twice-a-year exercise. Organisations must constantly be on the front-foot to identify and thwart attacks, and regular and consistent threat hunting is key to this; failure to do so means organisations will remain vulnerable,” said Bugal.

Forty-five percent of companies surveyed haven’t made a change to their information or cybersecurity approach in the last 12 months, indicating a passive attitude to cybersecurity — something that should be a priority, Sophos said. The driving factor behind a change in security strategy is reactive: a victim suffers an attack or breach, leading to an “attack, change, attack, change” cycle, a trend observed since 2019. In fact, half (49%) of the respondents are planning to make changes in the next six months due to experiencing an attack.

“Cybersecurity strategies must move with — or even faster than — the threat landscape and, sadly, that’s not happening at the moment. By updating cybersecurity strategies after a successful attack, organisations will always remain in a reactive state and continue to be easy targets for attacks. Organisations that need help can outsource all or part of their threat-hunting procedures to experts who monitor systems 24x7 and who also have access to telemetry and artificial intelligence for faster detection and response capabilities,” Bugal advised.

*Sophos commissioned Tech Research Asia (TRA) to undertake this research into the Asia Pacific and Japan cybersecurity landscape. This includes a major quantitative survey where a total of 900 responses were captured across Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore.