The threat of substantial material attacks and getting board support for their efforts are top-of-mind issues among the world’s CISOs, according to a new report released by Proofpoint Tuesday. While nearly half of the 1,400 CISOs surveyed for the annual Voice of the CISO report (48%) say their organization is at risk of suffering a material cyberattack in the next 12 months. That’s substantially lower than 2021, when nearly two-thirds of the CISOs (64%) expressed similar sentiments.
“That drop was a bit surprising,” Proofpoint Global Resident CISO Lucia Milica, who supervised the survey, tells CSO Online. When the pandemic hit, CISOs were scrambling to put temporary controls in place to deal with the explosion of remote workers and enable a business to operate securely, she explains. “Over the last two years, CISOs have had time to bring in more permanent controls to support hybrid work. That’s put more CISOs at ease in terms of feeling that they can protect their organizations.”