Neustar comments on Gartner MSE survey

According to the latest forecast by Gartner (www.gartner.com), security and risk management, application and integration strategies, and infrastructure and operations are the top three technology priorities for midsize enterprises (MSEs) in 2022.   With MSE technology leaders heading into the 2023 budgeting season, we ask Michael Smith, CTO, Neustar Security Services (https://neustarsecurityservices.com) for his views.

“Due to the size and scale of their operations, MSEs are often the first to feel the effects of inflation and are most susceptible to long-term negative impacts.  We have witnessed an accelerated rate of change over the past two years complicates the selection of new tools, and MSEs are shifting investments and adjusting their budgets to fund their top technology priorities as they look to solve the more complex business challenges.”

“But MSEs are typically hard to defend due to their structure.  Unfortunately, they do not always have access to cybersecurity staff and often lack the economies of scale or even the market size to attract vendors who can help them, so it is extremely hard to find service providers that can assist.  Whilst some providers have finally started working in this market, which is positive to see, it is still very much in its infancy, which leaves businesses incredibly vulnerable to attackers.  Moving forwards, MSE leaders and IT teams need to focus on managed devices – a computer that regularly receives A-V updates or OS patches, regularly monitoring status and logs which are reported and assigned to a member of staff and regularly backed up.”

“The threat landscape has evolved significantly, and medium-sized enterprises are starting to realize the damage and disruption attackers can pose to their services.  All organizations, regardless of their size, should be committed to best current practices (BCPs) and know that they are responsible for their customers’ data.”

“As Gartner’s survey findings suggest, business leaders are starting to review their defence technologies and mitigation plans that they have in place to protect their infrastructure.  Given, MSE leaders will have to rapidly operationalize their investments if they are looking to deliver time to value and keep up with the accelerated rate of change, we have witnessed since the start of the pandemic – especially if they are looking to stay ahead of the more dangerous threats and attack methods that are emerging.”