Sophos: Many companies remain vulnerable to attacks in cyberspace

KUALA LUMPUR: A significant number of organisations in Malaysia today do not think they have the basics in order when it comes to cyberspace security, be it skilled cyber security personnel to properly detect, investigate and respond to threats, or a sufficient budget.

Citing the findings of a recent research undertaken by Sophos, a leading name in endpoint and network security, its senior director for Asean and Korea, Sumit Bansal said a majority of the survey respondents were also finding it highly challenging to stay up to date with cyber security technologies amid the constantly evolving nature of attacks.

The respondents comprised chief information security officers and chief executive officers of small and medium-sized companies and large organisations from the Asia-pacific region,

Seventy-two per cent of Malaysian companies are struggling to recruit cyber security professionals and this is the case not only in Malaysia but elsewhere in the region as well, Sumit told Bernama in a recent online Zoom interview from Singapore.

Giving an example, he said a large corporation with over 8,000 users and 100 sites in the Philippines has only three cyber security personnel simply because of difficulty in recruiting cyber security experts.

The company had been searching for an additional cyber security professional the past few months but yet to find a candidate.

This gap in expertise was exacerbated by the fact that only 88 people currently possessed CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification to serve the entire Philippines.

Sumit said the CISSP was an important qualification in the management of information security.

In Malaysia, he said that even if the number of holders with CISSP is doubled, there is still a big gap in cyber security expertise especially when considering Malaysia’s plans for digital transformation, he reasoned.