IT Security Pros Are Ready to Fight Cyber-Threats

The IT security landscape in 2015 is setting up to be a study in contrasts: Confidence is high among security professionals, even though they expect to be victimized by more attacks, and, as a result, they are planning to significantly beef up their defenses during the coming year. Such is the takeaway from a recent survey of 250 IT security professionals conducted by security vendor ThreatTrack Security. The confidence expressed by the respondents seems to contradict a market that was shaken by a series of headline-grabbing data breaches during 2014. Julian Waits, CEO of ThreatTrack, believes that the findings hint at a welcome combination of confidence and practicality. "The overwhelming optimism that the survey respondents showed seems to indicate a growing confidence in newly available predictive security analytics tools that may help them to more quickly identify attack campaigns in progress," Waits said. "At the same time, they indicated that they are aware of the increased risk of attacks that they will almost certainly face in 2015, which goes to show that they aren't operating with their heads in the sand." One additional consideration the survey unearthed: Companies that employ a chief information security officer (CISO) appear to possess more awareness of the potential for attacks and a slightly higher level of confidence.