New Altinet Research Highlights Major Concerns for IT Leaders

New Altinet Research Highlights Major Concerns for IT Leaders.

Latest Altinet survey shows 92% of IT Leaders in the UK believe user error poses a risk to their organisation, and other findings collated in the first Altinet Email Protection Report.

Key Findings

• Phishing Attacks and Ransomware are the biggest concerns
• COVID pandemic leads to phishing attack boom
• User error a significant threat, say 92% of IT leaders
• 77% of organisations still rely on rules-based inbox defence technology
• 54% of IT leaders reported a noticeable increase in user error after transitioning to remote working
• IT leaders value ‘Simplicity’ over ‘Low Cost’ solutions

Altinet Ltd, a company within the Arrow Communications Group, are a leading UK cybersecurity managed service provider (MSP). The findings of their first 2022 Email Protection Report have been released, which builds on the results from a survey of IT leaders across the UK. 

The survey collated data around cyber threat concerns, currently available prevention technologies, backup postures, and more, with IT professionals from all industries taking part. Education, Technology, and Manufacturing stood out as the majority verticals along with Healthcare, Government and Financial Services. In total, the survey results represent cybersecurity trends and behaviours from over 780,000 users across the UK.

The Need for Email Protection

Altinet’s independent survey was designed by the team of cybersecurity experts to identify which email protection pain points were of most concern within IT and network departments across the UK. The resultant Email Protection Report addresses the prominent threat types and their impacts on businesses, and pays attention to the changes seen in the cyber landscape in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Phishing Still Number One Concern

The Altinet Email Protection Report found that the Phishing Attacks remain the number one concern for 40% of IT teams at the moment. The second most common area of concern was Ransomware (28%). Malicious Payloads were also identified as a greater perceived threat than Credential Theft, which goes against expected trends. An extract from the report reads: 

‘These figures are representative of recent email threat trends; ransomware horror stories have made regular headlines across mainstream news outlets, as have COVID-specific phishing attacks which hackers used to leverage global uncertainty and fear to their advantage.’

‘Simplicity’ is Key

A third (33.7%) of participants in Altinet’s independent survey expressed that they value ‘Simplicity’ above all else when it comes to their email protection solutions. As cyberthreats have developed in complexity, so too have the technologies used to combat them, making it harder for IT teams to manage their solutions effectively – which is what this response supports. 

24% of survey participants identified Cloud Integration as their key consideration when choosing an email protection solution. 17% said granular control. Together these answers indicate a shift in preference to cloud-based SaaS offerings, which are lightweight and scalable deployments with advanced flexibility that many IT professionals prefer.

Methodology

The Altinet team evaluated data from the Altinet Email Protection Survey, which gathered qualitative results from 96 IT department leaders covering 781,194 users across the UK. Altinet’s survey was designed to identify key trends, industry concerns, and emerging threat vectors.