Very few businesses are fully prepared to deal with cyber attacks, according to a new report by Accenture. The consulting firm reports that hackers are a very real threat to companies, most of whom deal with cyber attacks every week.
The report was based on a survey of over 900 corporate executives, most of whom acknowledged that cyber attacks represented a serious risk to their businesses. Two-thirds of those surveyed said their companies face "significant attacks" that test the strength of their company's IT system on a daily or weekly basis.
So what are businesses doing to head off hackers? According to the survey, 53 percent of executives said their company had a "continuity plan" that is regularly updated to anticipate future attacks and 45 percent have produced threat models to existing and planned business operations.
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Other key cybersecurity strategies, however, are less common. Only 25 percent of executives reported working resilience parameters for their operating models and technology architecture. And only 9 percent run test attacks to test the strength of their security systems.
Some attacks and breaches may be inevitable, according to the report, but companies that are fully prepared will be able to minimize the damage when disaster strikes.
A number of prominent cyberattacks in the past year have led to increased anxiety about corporations' ability to protect sensitive information that consumers, patients and workers depend on. Major companies, such as Target, Anthem, Sony, and UCLA Health have announced major breaches of their systems that potentially allowed hackers access to confidential information about their employees and customers.
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