Barely any businesses are really that confident about their security protection

The majority of organizations in the UK are not confident they would be able to withstand a cyberattack at all, new research has claimed.

A report from TeamViewer based on answers from 500 business leaders in Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, the UK, and the US found one of the problems leading to a vulnerable outlook is poor connectivity .

In fact, global organizations with gaps in connectivity are more likely to be held back by differences between departments (30%) and the inability to show the ROI of tech connectivity (27%). Furthermore, those with excellent connectivity are most likely to be held back by worries of cybersecurity (24%). Also, just a quarter (25%) of businesses in the UK believe they are the leaders in their sector when it comes to cybersecurity performance.

In data we trust

Besides poor connectivity, businesses are also distrustful towards internal data, mostly due to “multiple versions of the truth within the company”, based on different data sets (37%), and conflicting data management practices (34%). Ultimately, in 31% of cases, there is simply too much unreliable hardware.

Organizations of different sizes have varying levels of trust, too, driven mostly by data literacy. Among smaller companies (those generating up to $50 million a year in revenue) data literacy is present at roughly 40% of the workforce. Among larger enterprises ($10 billion in annual revenue or more), data literacy sits at 21%.

While confidence in cybersecurity is low, the number of (successful) cyberattacks is growing every year. Currently, cybercrime is one of the biggest worries for many organizations, with global losses reaching $12.5 billion in 2023, according to the FBI, and Statista . The year before, losses were roughly $10 billion.

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