Kaspersky’s latest global survey has revealed that the majority of professionals believe there are "a few" or "some" areas that could be enhanced, while one in four advocates for significant upgrades.
A study titled "Improving resilience: cybersecurity through system immunity" conducted by Kaspersky, explored how organisations currently manage cybersecurity and how they are preparing for future challenges. This research surveyed 850 IT professionals responsible for cybersecurity in large companies across Europe, the Americas, APAC, Russia, and the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa (META) region, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Egypt, and South Africa. These respondents represented a diverse range of industries and organisational levels, offering a comprehensive view of current security postures and pain points.
The survey reveals that, despite high satisfaction levels—with 85% of experts surveyed from South Africa stating they are "satisfied" to "extremely satisfied" with their current protection—the desire for stronger and more adaptable defenses remains widespread. Although only 15% of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with their cybersecurity measures, most recognise the need for improvement. Specifically, 65% believe there are "a few" or "some" areas that could be enhanced, while 35% advocate for significant upgrades.
When asked to identify the weakest aspects of their cybersecurity systems that they would like to improve, respondents from South Africa pointed to various operational and technical challenges. The most common issues included:
- Manual processes consuming excessive time (38%)
- Reactive protection lacking proactive threat detection (25%)
- Poor control over security policy implementation (25%)
- High risks of systemic collapse following breaches (25%)
- "Alert fatigue" (25%)
Among other critical weak sides of their current cybersecurity systems noted by respondents in South Africa were shortage of skilled personnel (23%), overly complex IT/OT environments (20%), and outdated threat intelligence (15%). Additional concerns included: limited or unclear security policy (18%), complexity of managing disparate solutions (15%).
These findings highlight the urgent need for streamlined intelligent security tools to address these vulnerabilities effectively. The reliance on manual processes leads to increased operational overhead and delays in identifying and responding to threats, while the absence of proactive threat detection reduces the ability to prevent breaches before they occur. The management of multiple different security solutions leads to gaps in coverage, misconfigurations, and increased risk of oversight, as security teams struggle to maintain an integrated, effective defense across diverse systems. The fragmentation hampers swift response times and increases the likelihood of overlooked vulnerabilities, ultimately weakening the organisation’s overall security posture.
As organisations strive to strengthen their cybersecurity posture, this research highlights that, alongside enhancing traditional cybersecurity solutions, vendors are working to develop innovative approaches: shifting from protecting inherently vulnerable software with applied security measures toward creating secure-by-design systems with innate resilience. Such systems are capable of safeguarding their core assets even when compromised, often with minimal or no additional cybersecurity spending.
"More and more organisations are beginning to understand that modern challenges require not just strong protection but also a proactive and cohesive security strategy that strengthens every aspect of their digital landscape against potential breaches. That’s why it is essential for companies to adopt a transformative approach, integrating advanced threat intelligence and streamlined processes, and applying reliable, all-encompassing solutions to protect their assets while ensuring operational continuity and building customer trust," says Alexander Kostyuchenko, Head of Technology Solutions Product Line at Kaspersky.
To enable comprehensive protection of all business assets and processes, Kaspersky experts recommend:
- Use centralised and automated solutions such as Kaspersky Next XDR Expert. By aggregating and correlating data from multiple sources in one place and using machine-learning technologies, this solution provides effective threat detection and fast automated response.
- Provide InfoSec professionals with an in-depth visibility into cyberthreats targeting your organisation. The latest Kaspersky Threat Intelligence will provide your team with rich, meaningful and actual context across the entire incident management cycle and helps identify cyber risks in a timely manner.
- As an alternative to traditional cybersecurity, develop secure-by-design solutions and protect them at the code and architecture levels. Based on KasperskyOS, a Kaspersky operating system, your products can be inherently protected and can perform their critical functions even in an aggressive environment with no additional cybersecurity solutions.
To read the full report, please visit the website.
