CISOs in Singapore struggle for support vs cyberattacks

All CISOs in Singapore are struggle to get support from the executive board for the resources needed to maintain cybersecurity strength, a new research from Trellix shows.

The Trellix study, conducted by Vanson Bourne, surveyed more than 500 global CISOs from companies with a minimum of 1,000 employees in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, India, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

The study found that more than half (54%) of respondents in Singapore think their jobs would be easier if all employees across the entire business were better aware of the challenges of cybersecurity. 

In addition, one-third of CISOs cite a lack of skilled talent on their team as a primary challenge.

For CISOs in Singapore, the pressure is high as 70% have managed a major cybersecurity incident at least once, and 28% more than once.  Also, 74% feel fully or mostly accountable for the incidents and 29% experienced major attrition from the security operations team as a direct result.

They are also working with too many of the wrong solutions as organisations report using an average of 28 individual security solutions, and 36% say a top hurdle is having too many pieces of technology without a sole source of truth. CISOs can find the number of security solutions available to them overwhelming, unnecessary, and challenging.

The right solutions would make a difference as 96% agree that having the right tools in place would save them considerable time. Also, 40% want access to a single integrated enterprise tool to optimise security investments.

Jonathan Tan, managing director for Asia at Trellix, said that despite the majority of CISOs reporting that cybersecurity is important to their board members, the research shows that there is still an apparent lack of support from leadership to maintain cybersecurity strength of companies in Singapore.

“The importance of having the right technology in place is also evident, but what many organisations lack is a unified IT security system that leverages XDR and is constantly evolving to protect against the most sophisticated cyberthreats,” said Tan.

“While preventing security breaches is important, organisations should also have a plan in place to mitigate these breaches when it happens,” he added.