A study of more than 1,200 IT professionals in EMEA has revealed that, in the last year, more than one in five enterprises has experienced a security breach and one in 10 has suffered a privacy breach. Nearly half of enterprises (45%) said their enterprises either delayed or even missed an opportunity to reduce costs as a result of an IT-related problem or incident. With exactly half of the organisations reporting an IT staff shortage, these issues are likely to continue, the study found.
Conducted by global non-profit professional association ISACA, the study also found that 42% of organisations believed customer satisfaction had been reduced in the last 12 months due to an IT-related problem or incident. Additionally, 42% had incurred unexpected expenses and 18% believed their reputation had been harmed due to IT issues. Ten per cent of respondents even had a competitor beat them to market due to IT complications. When looking at specific problems organisations had experienced, 35% had faced inadequate disaster recovery or business continuity measures, and 17% suffered a serious IT operations incident.
When asked about the issue most likely to impact their enterprise's security in the next year, top answers were data leakage (17%), cyber-attacks (15%), inadvertent employee mistakes (17%), incidents related to bring your own device (BYOD) (13%) and cloud computing (11%). Fifteen per cent said all of these issues were top concerns, and 9% believed that none of these are concerns.
"Today, it is critical for enterprise leaders to recognise information management and IT as a business issue. The survey shows that more than a third of respondents still report a disconnect between the information and business strategies," said Dr Derek Oliver, CEO, Ravenswood Consultants Ltd, co-chair, ISACA COBIT 5 Task Force and past president of the ISACA London Chapter. "Using a business framework for IT governance, such as COBIT 5, will help clarify the roles of the business and information, and provide a common language and set of goals to get everyone on the same page."
For global results of the survey, visit http://COBIT5presskit.isaca.org
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