Amid Massive Cybersecurity Adoption, Failure in Prioritizing Threat-alerts Leaves Enterprises Vulnerable (Infographic) As per a report by Juniper Networks and Ovum Research, India is the second-highest cybersecurity prone market after China

Unlike the old times, no paper records or hand-written notes are maintained to document transactions and work done. The influx of technology has changed the way professional landscape works. While major players are using centralized security platform to ascertain data safety, cyber threats are still looming around, waiting for the right moment to attack.

Enterprises are highly depended on cloud services with every passing day to secure data. A proliferation of security tools has been noted, further increasing the professionals' reliance on cloud service providers. Corporate giants prefer to secure their workloads in the cloud to protect their existing infrastructure and keeping a proper record of their tasks.

Threat-alert Fatigue

With the increased cloud adoption comes an array of threat-alerts, ignoring which can leave the enterprise digitally vulnerable. A new report from the Juniper Networks and Ovum Research has revealed that IT professionals struggling to accurately prioritize alerts due to their high volume due to which many network security threats today go uninvestigated.

The risk associated with such threats push the enterprises towards adopting a centralized security management platform and implementing automation to better prioritize the growing number of alerts. In the study conducted across 11 countries including China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia and Singapore, respondents agreed to deal with approximately 50 alerts a day.

They further mentioned that very little of the threat-alerts received require further investigation. Notably, India is the second-highest cybersecurity prone market after China. While 8 per cent of the surveyed respondents confirmed receiving 1000 alerts per day, almost half implied about getting more than 50 threats a day.

Alert Prioritization

Financial services institutions deal with thousands of alerts every day and it's nearly impossible for their security teams to investigate each threat. In most cases, the majority of threats are not tough enough to merit further action. According to two-thirds of the survey respondents, less than 10 per cent of such threats warrants further attention.

In order to ensure attending to legitimate threats, enterprises need to prioritize the threats accordingly. With cybercriminals discovering new ways to attack prospective prey, enterprises need to work on new security solutions.

Centralized Security Management

As organizations scale up, the need for using more tools grow. More than half of the enterprises with over 1,000 branches in operation admitted to managing over 100 tools, clearly indicating the growing need for centralized management. To combat the threat fatigue, organizations are widely adopting automation of key security operation tasks are to prioritize and analyze alerts more effectively.

Among the Indian respondents to Juniper and Ovum's survey, 30 per cent confirmed managing more than 50 tools whereas 45 per cent reported higher levels of using a centralized security platform. Larger organizations with larger branch networks are in major need of a centralized security platform.

Managing Data Security

With organizations embracing SaaS applications and migrating to either IaaS or PaaS environments, their reliance on Communication Service Providers is a big problem. 30 per cent of respondents from India have opted for on-premise security tools to secure their workloads in the cloud, almost the same amount as those that depend on their CSPs.

"With the increasing number of organizations in India moving their workloads to the cloud, more needs to be done in leveraging the full spectrum of security functions that the cloud also provides," said Sriram TV, Director, Consulting and Business Development, India, Juniper Networks.

Check out the infographic by Juniper Networks and Ovum Research on threat-alert fatigue among enterprises due to increased cloud adoption: