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Trend Micro Incorporated’s new global study has found that Australian organisations are struggling to define and secure an expanding cyber attack surface, hampering risk management efforts.
According to Mick McCluney, technical director at Trend Micro, a unified, platform-based approach is the best way to minimise visibility gaps, enhance risk assessments and improve protection across these complex, distributed IT environments.
"IT modernisation over the past two years was a necessary response to the ravages of the pandemic, but in many cases it unwittingly expanded the digital attack surface, giving threat actors more opportunities to compromise key assets," McCluney added.
The study revealed that 69 per cent of Australian organisations are worried about their growing attack surface. Over a third (47 per cent) said it is "constantly evolving and messy", with less than half (41 per cent) able to fully define its extent. Over two-fifths (41 per cent) of respondents went further, admitting the digital attack surface is "spiralling out of control".
The main reason organisations are struggling to manage and understand cyber risk in these environments is due to lack of visibility, which makes controlling gaps a bigger challenge.
Over half (55 per cent) said they have blind spots that hamper security, with network environments cited as the most opaque. On average, respondents estimated having just 60 per cent visibility of their attack surface.
Trend Micro's other key findings include:
These challenges are multiplied in global organisations. Two-thirds (64 per cent) of respondents claimed that being an international enterprise that spans multiple jurisdictions makes managing the attack surface harder. However, 20 per cent are still mapping their systems manually and 23 per cent do so regionally, which can create further silos and visibility gaps.
The study also revealed that almost half (48 per cent) of Australian organisations don’t believe their method of assessing risk exposure is sophisticated enough.
[Related: Aussie AI compliance specialist makes it on the global CyberTech100 list]
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