Cisco: ‘CISOs give priority to the consolidation of suppliers’.

According to Cisco’s fifth annual CISO Benchmark Study, security professionals are prioritizing vendor consolidation, networking and security team collaboration, and training to raise security awareness. The survey was conducted among over 3,000 security managers in 18 countries.

The investigation is an annual overview of the state of affairs regarding the chief information security officer (CISO). This year’s CISO’s indicate that complex security environments built from solutions from ten or more security suppliers can obstruct the view of the environment. As a result, 54 percent of respondents now indicate that there were ten or fewer suppliers for their environment.

For example, two thirds of the respondents say that it is not easy to determine the size of an incident and to get a grip on it. In addition, CISOs are concerned about unknown external threats around users, data, devices and apps.

To meet the challenges, 64 percent more are investing in defence technologies. 39 percent train employees to increase security awareness and 39 percent focus on risk reduction techniques.

Cloud

Many CISOs indicate that migration to the cloud will improve security. 93 percent of CISOs already say that this has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their teams. In addition, the perception that securing the cloud infrastructure is difficult decreased slightly. This number dropped from 55 percent in 2017 to 52 percent in 2019.

However, security professionals rely less on technologies that have not yet proven themselves, such as artificial intelligence (AI). For example, confidence in machine learning decreased from 77 percent in 2018 to 67 percent today. However, according to Cisco, AI and machine learning can be essential for the initial phase of prioritization and call management. Nevertheless, the use of technologies has decreased, from 74 percent last year to 66 percent now.