According to a recent study by Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity and digital privacy company, 15% of companies globally have experienced cyber incidents due to insufficient cybersecurity investment in the last two years. Alarmingly, critical infrastructure, oil&gas and energy organizations suffered the biggest number of cyber incidents due to improper budget allocation. And when it comes to companies’ finances globally, one-in-five admit they do not have the budget for adequate cybersecurity measures. Kaspersky conducted a study to discover the opinions of IT Security professionals working for SMEs and enterprises worldwide regarding the human impact on the cybersecurity in a company. The telecommunications sector suffered 13% of cyber incidents due to budget constraints, while transport & logistics, and financial services companies each saw 8% of them. When asked about the budget for cybersecurity measures, 78% of respondents globally said they are equipped to keep up with or even stay ahead of new threats. However, 21% of companies are not doing so well – 18% report that they don’t have sufficient funds to protect the company’s infrastructure properly. At the same time, there are still companies without cost allocations for cybersecurity at all – 3% claimed they don’t have a dedicated budget for cyber protection needs. Many respondents’ companies are eager to take steps to strengthen their cybersecurity in the next 1-1.5 years. One of the most popular areas of investment is threat detection software and trainings, where 39% of companies plan to allocate budgets for educational programs for cybersecurity professionals and 38% for training general staff. Other popular measures organizations plan to take soon are introducing endpoint protection software ,hiring additional IT professionals , and adopting SaaS cloud solutions. “Today, companies must align cybersecurity investment with a business strategy and consider cybersecurity as one of their business goals. The challenges can be met through the use of various modern approaches and technologies. For example, we are investing in developing our SASE portfolio as well as XDR and MDR with integrated AI, Machine Learning, automated detection and response, automated threat investigation, out of the box integrations and much more. To ensure process transparency and prove the value of our solutions, we also provide C-level dashboards and reports for CISOs, which include information on how many incidents we prevented, how quickly incidents were investigated, and the effectiveness of deployed cybersecurity solutions. We also highlight customer-specific risks, and show them trends particular to the industry to help them shape their cybersecurity by targeting their defenses around current dangers, and justify investments in the necessary technology.” comments Ivan Vassunov, VP, Corporate Products at Kaspersky.