19 Cybersecurity Stats to Kickoff National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019

“Own IT. Secure IT. Protect IT.” That’s the Department of Homeland Security’s rallying cry for this year’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NSCAM). Held every October, NSCAM brings to the masses what IT professionals and tech executives know all too well: Cyberattacks pose an ever-changing, ever-growing threat to national and economic security, and no household or business is immune.

To kick off National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we compiled 19 cybersecurity stats that paint a staggering picture of the challenges ahead for businesses and IT professionals.

There are two major undercurrents running through these numbers. First, sophisticated cyberattacks are increasing in frequency and come at a high cost for organizations who are taken offline or lose data. Secondly, although IT pros are well aware of the threat landscape, acquiring the tools, skillsets and resources needed to protect their businesses are significant hurdles. Take a look for yourself below:

1. The number of cybersecurity attacks reported to the Pentagon every day: 10 Million ⁽¹⁾
2. The ratio of attempted cyberattacks on web applications to successful attacks: 100,000 to 1 ⁽²⁾
   
3. The percentage of devices at small or medium-sized businesses that run operating systems that are expired or are about to expire: 66% ⁽³⁾
4. The ratio of safe URLs to malicious URLs in 2018: 9:1 (down from 15:1 in 2018) ⁽⁴⁾
5. The percentage of data breaches involving compromised privileged credentials, such as passwords: 80% ⁽⁵⁾
6. The number of records stolen or leaked from public cloud storage in 2018 due to poor configuration: 70 million ⁽⁴⁾
7. The percentage of IT professionals who say protecting their organization from cyberattacks is their top challenge in 2019: 36% (the no. 1 challenge reported) ⁽⁶⁾
   
8. The number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States: 313k ⁽¹⁾
   
9. The estimated number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs worldwide by 2022: 8 million ⁽¹⁾
10. The percentage of IT professionals who say the time it takes their teams to address critical patches and updates leaves their organizations exposed to security: 52% ⁽⁶⁾
11. The average number of days it takes an organization to patch critical CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures): 34 ⁽²⁾
12. The estimated percentage of servers not fully up to date on patches, according to IT professionals: 26% ⁽⁶⁾
13. The number of IT professionals who say they’re very confident their organization has adequate resources, tools and staff to secure its servers, applications and data: 1 in 4 ⁽⁶⁾
14. The average cost of a successful phishing attack on a single small or medium-sized business: $1.6 Million ⁽¹⁾
15. The average annual cost of infrastructure downtime to the average enterprise: $20 million ⁽⁷⁾
16. The estimated global cost of cybercrime by the end of 2019: $2 trillion ⁽¹⁾
    
17. Estimated annual spending on cloud security tools by 2023: $12.6 billion ⁽⁸⁾
18. The number of IT professionals who say improving data center security is a primary reason for moving away from on-premise data centers to a remote cloud or colocation facility: 4 in 10 ⁽⁵⁾
19. The percentage of organizations planning to invest more in IT resilience capabilities such as backup, replication and DR over the next two years: 90% ⁽⁹⁾

Resources for Cybersecurity & Business Continuity Protection

While these statistics provide a sobering look at the challenges faced by IT and information security professionals around the globe, the good news is no one has to go it alone. At INAP, we partner with our customers to safeguard their critical infrastructure (and their brand’s reputation) with comprehensive data center and cloud solutions, including managed security services and cloud backup and disaster recovery services.

• Chat now to schedule a complementary IT infrastructure solution consultation
• Browse enterprise-grade managed security solutions for INAP Cloud and INAP Colo
• Sign-up for a free 30-day cloud backup trial, powered by Veeam Cloud Connect (no-credit card required).
• Build your own disaster recovery plan with INAP’s Business Impact Analysis tool

Sources & Further Reading:

1. Department of Homeland Security. “National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019.”gov.
2. “It Takes an Average of 38 Days to Patch a Vulnerability.”
3. Alert Logic. “Critical Watch Report: 2019 SMB Threatscape.”
4. “Internet Security Threat Report.” February 2019.
5. Forrester Research via CloudTech. “Three reasons why killing passwords will improve your cloud security.”
6. “The State of IT Infrastructure Management 2018.” December 2018.
7. “Cloud Data Management Infographic.” June 2019.
8. “Cloud Security Spend Set to Reach $12.6B by 2023.” April 2019
9. IDC & Zerto. “The State of IT Reslience Report 2019.”

Ryan Hunt

Ryan Hunt is the Director of Content & Communications.

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