In its “Annual Cybersecurity Readiness Index”, published on Wednesday 7 May, the American company Cisco expresses its concern that European organisations are lagging behind in securing their software and networks against the resurgence of attacks.
Without being fundamentally alarmist, the report nevertheless points to a significant lack of overall preparation on the part of companies, faced with the growing use of artificial intelligence and a crucial lack of expertise in the field within their teams.
Only 3% of European organisations have reached a level of preparedness considered to be “mature” in terms of cybersecurity. 87% have experienced an AI-related security incident in the past year, and 82% say a lack of skilled talent is a major barrier to cybersecurity preparedness.
The shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals is a “challenge” for half of organisations, and 58% are unconvinced by their employees’ level of knowledge about AI-related threats.
According to Cisco, this lack of awareness leaves organisations in a “critically exposed situation”, especially as almost half of European organisations (46%) have suffered cyber attacks in the past year.
Paradoxically, the report points out the dangers posed by the increasingly widespread use of AI, but also demonstrates that it has become a tool used on a massive scale to protect against risks: 84% of organisations say they use it “to better understand threats”, 81% to better detect them and 64% to respond to and counter cyber-attacks.
On the EU side, the fight against these new forms of so-called ‘hybrid’ threats has been the subject of a number of announcements and initiatives in recent months.
In addition to directives such as ‘NIS2’ (see EUROPE 13506/11) and the cyber-resilience regulation (see EUROPE 13542/31), the Commission plans to revise the cyber-security regulation (see EUROPE 13620/13) and put in place a new plan to improve the coordination of crisis management within the Union (see EUROPE 13596/19).
See the Cisco report: https://aeur.eu/f/gpn (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)